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Nebius reports Q1 2026 results Wednesday, stock has risen to $181, up over 100% YTD and this print matters more than most people realise.
For a background view on this company if you haven't heard of already, they are a full stack AI cloud infrastructure business, delivering GPU clusters, a cloud platform and developer tools. Think of AWS but purpose built for AI workloads. They spun out of Yandex and relisted on the DAQ in late 2024 and have compounded revenue at an insane rate since. Q4 2025 was up 547% yoy.
$50B in contracted revenue, $27B from Meta, $19.4B from MSFT and a $2B investment from Nvidia. The Meta contract is fully delivered and live, MSFT tranches are being delivered through 2026 with full run rate revenue expected in 2027. The pipeline and revenue expectations aren't speculative, they are hard contracts with the two largest company's on earth.
Management being a core part of the thesis, former co founder of Yandex, Arkady Volozh, ran as CEO for over 25 years. This company was built not inherited, he built one of the most successful businesses in history from scratch, in quiet possibly the hardest possible environments to do it in. When Geopolitics took this business from him, he immediately started rebuilding a new company being Nebius. The combination of proven large scale execution, deep technical credibility and the level of personal skin in the game is rare. It's one of the reasons im comfortable holding such a decent chunk of a position in them.
Why I chose Nebius instead of CRWV or IREN. CRWV as everyone knows has an ugly balance sheet, continued additions of debt on top of the $21B pile. It's also facing big fraud lawsuits, in saying that the business is real and executing but the leverage isn't something im comfortable with. Nebius has less debt and is building the full stack AI ecosystem rather than just a gpu rental business. That software layer is what commands higher pricing per MW and its something CRWV doesnt have. Nebius also commands a higher rate per MW in its MSFT deal in comparison to IREN, this is due to its software tech stack. IREN is essentially a bare metal GPU landlord, its often considered a provider of bare metal, contract based GPU capacity. It's a fine business model but its a commodity offering no software moat and limited pricing power as demand catches up to supply. Also, a lot of IREN's revenue still comes from BTC mining which isn't a segment I want involved. Nebius is the only one out of the three that combines contracted revenue, a full stack software platform and backing from the biggest company in the world.
What i'm watching on earnings day, ARR trajectory, need to see the capacity ramp translating into ARR at a pace needed to hit targets, also commentary on H2 ramp and it's timing is critical. MSFT deployment, how are tranches being delivered, what's the timing on the remainder and when does full run rate rev kick in. Lastly the Eigen AI integration, they spent $643M on acquiring them which is an inference specialist, which is supposed to integrate into Nebius token factory.
Bear case is needing explanation, $16-20B in capex for 2026 and EBIT staying negative all year, EPS number on Tuesday will look ugly around -$0.73. The company is spending aggressively to capture the supply constrained market and profitability is still a while away, investors involved with this stock need a stomach lol. Execution is a major risk, 9 new centres announced, an enormous operation to undertake and any slippage in deployment can hit revenue hard.
I have been in this since last say October and it's a decent holding of mine, I trimmed slightly around $160 for capital to be put elsewhere but wasn't a thesis trim. Modelling shows it's current price of $180 as pretty much in line with my fair value, not adding rn but levels below $140 seem attractive if your looking to hold long term.
Let me know what you think of this company and how you're positioning.