Nebius Group (NBIS) shareholders woke up to a life-changing Monday on March 16. The Amsterdam-based AI cloud company announced a five-year infrastructure agreement with Meta Platforms (META) worth up to $27 billion, sending shares surging 14% in premarket trading.
To put that in perspective, the deal is larger than Nebius’s entire market cap of roughly $25 billion. A single customer just committed to a contract that could exceed the company’s current market value.
The announcement also carries a detail that matters beyond the dollar figure. This will be one of the first large-scale deployments of Nvidia‘s Vera Rubin platform, the next-generation AI chip succeeding the Blackwell architecture.
That puts Nebius at the cutting edge of AI infrastructure at precisely the moment demand is accelerating fastest.
How the Nebius-Meta deal is structured
The agreement is split into two parts. The first covers $12 billion in dedicated computing capacity that Nebius will begin delivering across multiple locations starting in early 2027, CNBC reported. That infrastructure will be built around Vera Rubin clusters designed specifically for Meta’s AI training and inference workloads.
The second part gives Meta the option to purchase up to $15 billion more in available compute capacity over the same five-year window. Nebius intends to sell that capacity to third-party customers first, with Meta buying whatever remains.
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It is a smart structure: Meta gets guaranteed access to frontier compute, while Nebius keeps the flexibility to monetize overflow capacity to startups and enterprises.
“We are pleased to expand our significant partnership with Meta as part of securing more large, long-term capacity contracts to accelerate the build-out and growth of our core AI cloud business,” Nebius CEO Arkady Volozh said in a statement.
Meta and Nebius confirm a ninefold expansion of existing relationship
The March 16 announcement did not come out of nowhere. Meta had quietly signed an initial $3 billion five-year agreement with Nebius back in November 2025. Volozh disclosed that deal alongside the company’s third-quarter earnings.
Today’s announcement represents a ninefold expansion of that original commitment. The combined value of Meta’s contracted spend with Nebius now stands at $30 billion.
Nebius is no stranger to mega-deals at this point. In September 2025, the company signed an infrastructure agreement with Microsoft worth up to $19.4 billion over five years. That deal, combined with the Meta expansion, means Nebius has now locked in two of the largest external compute contracts in the industry within six months.
Why Meta is outsourcing compute on this scale
Meta has made AI its defining strategic priority for 2026. The company plans to direct up to $135 billion in capital expenditure toward AI-related projects this year alone, per CNBC. That is funded by its advertising profits, which continue to grow.
Even for Meta, building and operating all that infrastructure in-house is slow, expensive, and complex. Neoclouds like Nebius solve that problem. They handle the hardware, the power procurement, and the cluster builds, while Meta pays for utilization.
Locking in Vera Rubin capacity early gives Meta another edge. The company wants to be training its next generation of Llama models on the most advanced chips available, not the previous generation.
Given how competitive the AI race has become, a six-month hardware advantage over rivals matters.
Key Nebius milestones heading into 2026
- November 2025: Signed initial $3 billion deal with Meta, disclosed at Q3 earnings.
- September 2025: Signed up to $19.4 billion five-year infrastructure deal with Microsoft.
- March 11, 2026: Nvidia revealed a $2 billion strategic investment in Nebius.
- March 16, 2026: Meta deal expanded ninefold to $27 billion over five years.
- Q4 2025 revenue: $227.7 million, up 503% year over year, with ARR ending the year at $1.25 billion.
Nebius: a remarkable backstory
Few companies in the AI infrastructure space have a more unusual origin. Nebius was founded in 2022 as the international successor to Yandex, once known as Russia’s Google.
After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, founder Arkady Volozh sold all Russian assets to a Kremlin-linked consortium in July 2024 for roughly $2.4 billion. He retained the cloud and data center operations outside Russia under the Nebius name.
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The company listed on Nasdaq in October 2024 after trading had been suspended since February 2022. Since then, shares have risen more than 200% through 2025 and a further 35% year to date in 2026 before March 16’s premarket surge.
One structural advantage that traces directly to its Yandex roots: Nebius built up one of the strongest relationships with Nvidia of any customer outside the U.S. and China, giving it priority access to cutting-edge chips that competitors simply cannot match.
What happens next for Nebius investors
Nebius noted that its 2026 financial guidance remains unchanged, since the Meta capacity delivery does not begin until early 2027. The financial impact of this deal will materialize primarily beyond the current fiscal year.
The company has guided for $7 billion to $9 billion in annual recurring revenue by the end of 2026. It also plans to reach more than 3 gigawatts of contracted power, with 800 megawatts to 1 gigawatt connected by year’s end.
What the deal makes clear is that the race to supply AI infrastructure to the world’s largest technology companies is moving faster than anyone anticipated. Nebius has now positioned itself as a serious force at the center of it.
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