Nebius Turns Energy Into a Competitive Weapon: 1.2 GW in Pennsylvania, $25 Billion Infrastructure Plan

Nebius secures second gigawatt-scale US campus, inks landmark $27B Meta deal, and plans $16-20B in annual capex for AI infrastructure.

Nebius is placing a multi-billion-dollar bet that electricity, not just processing power, will separate winners from also-rans in the artificial intelligence infrastructure race. The company has locked in a second US campus of gigawatt scale, this time in Pennsylvania, securing land and power access for up to 1.2 gigawatts — enough to run hundreds of thousands of high-end GPUs.

The new site complements an earlier campus under construction near Independence, Missouri, where Nebius broke ground on roughly 400 acres. That facility is expected to generate about 1,200 construction jobs and 130 permanent roles, with tax payments of $650 million flowing to local schools and tax districts over its lifespan. In Pennsylvania, the first 250 to 300 megawatts are scheduled to come online by the end of 2027, with full capacity targeted for 2030 under the terms of the power agreement.

Total contracted electricity capacity now exceeds 3.5 gigawatts, of which more than 75 percent is owned by Nebius rather than leased. Management has raised its annual secured-power forecast to above 4 gigawatts.

Alongside the physical expansion, Nebius signed a landmark agreement with Meta worth up to $27 billion over five years. At least $12 billion of that is committed to dedicated computing capacity, while the remainder can be flexibly allocated between Meta and other customers. The deal provides the long-term demand visibility needed to justify the heavy upfront investment in land, power, and hardware.

That investment appetite showed in the first quarter. Revenue surged 684 percent year-on-year to $399 million, with adjusted EBITDA swinging to $129.5 million from a loss in the prior-year period. The company raised $6.3 billion in the quarter, including $2 billion in equity from Nvidia and $4.3 billion in convertible bonds. Cash on hand stood at $9.3 billion at the end of March, though capital expenditures reached roughly $2.5 billion, driven by GPU purchases and data center construction.

For the current year, Nebius plans to invest between $16 billion and $20 billion, and it has lifted its 2026 capital expenditure forecast to a range of $20 billion to $25 billion, up from a prior $16 billion to $20 billion. To help finance this, the company intends to use contracts with Meta and Microsoft as collateral for secured loans and may activate a stock program covering up to 25 million Class A shares.

Nebius is also strengthening its software layer. It acquired the core engineering team and key patents of AI specialist Clarifai, adding capabilities for controlling compute workloads. This follows the earlier purchase of Eigen AI.

The market greeted the news with a surge of nearly 16 percent. Shares opened at $204.14 after closing at $179.11 the prior day, pushing the market capitalization above $52 billion. At that level, the stock trades at roughly 16 times expected revenue for 2026, a multiple that leaves little room for execution errors.

Wolfe Research initiated coverage with a "Peer Perform" rating and a fair value range of $80 to $170, underscoring the uncertainty around translating gigawatt-scale capacity into predictable returns. Management, however, is sticking to its 2026 targets: an annualized revenue run rate of $7 billion to $9 billion, total revenue of $3 billion to $3.4 billion, and an adjusted EBITDA margin of around 40 percent. The challenge now is to prove that the power-centric strategy can generate the margins investors have priced in.