Nebius Stock: GPU Price Hikes, a $399 Target and the Debt Question Wall Street Can't Shake

Nebius will raise prices for its most sought-after Nvidia GPUs by roughly 17% to 21% from October 1, its second such move in three months.

Nebius is discovering what happens when the hardware everyone needs happens to sit in your racks. The AI cloud operator will raise prices for its most sought-after Nvidia graphics processors by roughly 17% to 21% starting October 1 — the second such adjustment in just three months. Rates for AMD chips are set to climb even higher, with premiums of about 25% on certain processors.

That kind of pricing power is rare in cloud computing, and it lands only when customers are scrambling for turnkey capacity and alternatives are thin on the ground. Nebius is cashing in on exactly that squeeze. The stock rose 9.0% to EUR 216.90 in today's European session, extending a run that has now reached 195% since the start of the year.

From Capacity Builder to Price Setter

The strategic shift is hard to miss. Alongside multi-year agreements with large customers that lock in a predictable base load, management is deliberately serving shorter-term, high-margin spot demand at significantly higher rates. The result is a business that captures the best of both worlds: dependable baseline utilization on one side, maximum margin extraction during demand spikes on the other.

The message has registered with the analyst community. BNP Paribas Exane upgraded the stock from Neutral to Outperform, lifting its price target dramatically from $260 to $399. Analyst Stefan Slowinski's reversal was among the more striking calls of the day, and the bank now projects annualized recurring revenue of roughly $22 billion by the end of 2027.

Bank of America is signaling tailwinds of its own. Analyst Tal Liani points to long-term contracts with so-called hyperscalers, which secure a reliable base load while shorter agreements are marketed at meaningful premiums. Both houses raised their multi-year revenue forecasts, and tie-ups such as the recently announced partnership with Palantir reinforce Nebius's standing as a preferred partner for sovereign AI infrastructure. SemiAnalysis, meanwhile, ranks the company at the Platinum tier in its neocloud leaderboard — top status among its peers.

The Numbers Behind the Confidence

The operating results give the bullish case real substance. Cloud revenue came in at $574.9 million for the second quarter of 2026, with an adjusted operating margin of just under 50% in the AI cloud segment. For a business that was still being viewed as a pure capacity builder not long ago, those figures suggest the infrastructure is already throwing off substantial returns.

Yet the same capital intensity that makes the model work also makes it expensive to sustain. Billions in infrastructure have yet to reach final utilization, and a persistently negative free cash flow forces the company back to the financing well again and again. In late August, Nebius secured gross proceeds of roughly $5.75 billion through a convertible bond.

Skeptics Dig In

That growing debt load has drawn prominent critics. Investor Michael Burry expanded his short positions against Nebius this week, betting on declining chip prices. His bearish stance is echoed by research firm Redburn, which rates the stock a Sell with an $84 target, warning that the boom could founder on inflated expectations and an approaching turn in the hardware cycle. Insider selling by senior executives adds another note of caution for anyone sizing a position.

There are operational risks too. Building giant data centers is an extremely capital-intensive gamble, and delays from external partners or power connections can throw ambitious timelines off course — as recent problems at competitors have shown.

For now, scarcity is winning the argument. The tension between genuine shortage-driven pricing and a risky debt lever is likely to keep the debate over Nebius alive well into next year.