Nebius Shares Slip from Peak as Growth Momentum Meets Capital Intensity Debate

Nebius shares fall 3.3%, down 11% from 52-week high; Q1 revenue surges 684% to $399M but $2.5B quarterly capex and $27B Meta deal highlight concentration risk.

Nebius stock has trimmed recent gains, trading at €217 on Wednesday — roughly 11% below Monday's 52-week high of €243 — as investor attention pivots from stratospheric growth rates to the capital required to sustain them. The shares slipped 3.3% in the session, with co-founder and chief business officer Roman Chernin taking the stage at the BofA Securities Global Technology Conference in a fireside chat that may shape after-hours sentiment.

The pullback comes exactly a year after the stock changed hands at around €33, meaning the shares have still more than sextupled over twelve months — a rally of over 550%. Yet the very scale of that advance has raised questions about whether the market has fully priced in the costs of building out AI infrastructure at industrial scale.

Revenue Explosion Masks Heavier Spending

First-quarter results, published on May 13, underscore the paradox. Nebius generated $399 million in revenue, a 684% jump from the $50.9 million reported a year earlier. AI-cloud revenue alone surged 841% to $390 million, accounting for nearly all of the top line. On an annualised basis, revenue stood at $1.92 billion at the end of March, and management has guided for a full-year 2026 range of $3.0 billion to $3.4 billion.

The bottom line also showed improvement: adjusted EBITDA swung from a loss of $53.7 million to a positive $129.5 million. Net income from continuing operations reached $621.2 million, though the adjusted net loss landed at $100.3 million — a reminder that accounting profits are being weighed down by the heavy depreciation and interest charges that come with a capital-intensive business model.

Indeed, Nebius plowed $2.5 billion into investments during the first quarter, mainly on GPU hardware and data-centre expansions. The company raised $6.3 billion in the same period, including a $2 billion equity injection from NVIDIA and $4.3 billion from convertible bonds. The balance sheet now shows liquid assets of roughly $9.3 billion against long-term debt of $8.4 billion, while property, plant and equipment has swollen to $7.1 billion.

Infrastructure Race and Customer Concentration

The build-out is accelerating. Contracted power capacity has already exceeded 3.5 gigawatts, above the original full-year target of 3 GW, and Nebius expects to surpass 4 GW by year-end. Key projects include a site in Pennsylvania with up to 1.2 GW of capacity, a second 1.2 GW facility in Independence, Missouri, and a 310-megawatt AI factory in Finland that the company calls one of the largest dedicated installations in Europe. The Pennsylvania plant is slated for phased commissioning from 2027.

But speed brings risk. A second master agreement with Meta, valued at up to $27 billion, reinforces Nebius’s standing with hyperscaler clients — yet it also exposes the company to concentration risk. Meta, Microsoft and other cloud giants wield significant negotiating power and are simultaneously investing in their own AI infrastructure, a dynamic that could cap margins over time.

Chernin’s appearance at the BofA conference, streamed live from 22:20 MESZ, offered no pre-announced agenda or product updates. For investors, the event functions more as a checkpoint on capital allocation, capacity timing and utilisation trends than a near-term catalyst. Any market-moving remarks are likely to emerge in the after-hours session in New York or from transcripts published later. Nebius has already scheduled a second investor engagement on June 9 in San Francisco — an AI Expert Forum that could provide further colour on infrastructure strategy.

The next concrete milestone is the half-year report, which will show whether utilisation of the new capacity is keeping pace with the torrid investment tempo. For a stock that has delivered a 184% gain since the start of 2026 alone, the margin for error is narrowing.