Nebius Shares Soar About 55% in Premarket After Massive Microsoft AI Infrastructure Deal

Nebius Shares Soar About 55% in Premarket After Massive Microsoft AI Infrastructure Deal

Shares of Amsterdam-listed Nebius Group jumped sharply in premarket trade on Tuesday after the AI infrastructure specialist announced a multi-billion-dollar supply agreement with Microsoft. The stock surged roughly 55% early in the session as investors raced to price in a long-term revenue stream that immediately transforms Nebius’s growth outlook. 

The agreement, disclosed by Nebius and reported by multiple outlets, commits Microsoft to lease GPU-based computing capacity from Nebius over a five-year period at an initial value of about $17.4 billion, with room to expand to roughly $19.4 billion if demand rises. Under the contract, Nebius will provide dedicated infrastructure from a new data centre in Vineland, New Jersey, supplying the kinds of high-performance GPUs that power large generative-AI models. The deal is one of the largest single commercial AI-infrastructure arrangements disclosed to date. 

Company materials and the filing described the arrangement as a phased provision of capacity, enabling Microsoft to accelerate AI workloads without shouldering the full upfront capex of new data-centre builds. Nebius said the contract will allow it to mobilise finance and debt secured against a predictable cash flow stream to complete the Vineland site and expand its “neocloud” offering — a model in which specialist cloud providers supply optimised AI compute to hyperscalers and large labs. Microsoft did not immediately provide public comment beyond confirming it had entered into an infrastructure agreement. 

Market reaction was immediate and volatile. Traders treated the deal as validation of Nebius’s vertically integrated GPU approach: the shares rocketed from mid-single digits earlier this year to near four figures on headline-driven flows, and trading volumes exploded in early hours. Analysts noted the practical significance of the contract for Microsoft — which has been racing to scale Azure’s AI capacity amid surging demand — and for the broader “neocloud” niche that includes competitors such as CoreWeave. The deal is likely to intensify competition for limited GPU supply and could accelerate further partnerships between hyperscalers and specialised infrastructure providers. 

The economics behind the move explain investor enthusiasm but also underline material execution risks. On the upside, a multi-year, high-value contract provides Nebius predictable revenue and improves financing options for its data-centre buildout. Institutional investors and lenders commonly view signed, long-dated offtake contracts as valuable collateral when underwriting debt for capital-intensive greenfield projects. On the downside, delivering tens of thousands of GPUs at scale, meeting stringent uptime and security SLAs for a hyperscaler, and completing construction on time in a constrained supply-chain environment are nontrivial operational hurdles — any delay or performance shortfall could materially affect cash flows and credit metrics. 

The announcement arrives as cloud providers confront a broad, industry-wide bottleneck: demand for high-end Nvidia GPUs has outstripped available supply, pushing buyers to novel procurement models and to third-party infrastructure partners. Microsoft has already turned to a mix of internal builds and third-party suppliers to expand capacity; this agreement signals a deeper strategic embrace of external partners to avoid slowing AI deployments. For Microsoft, the arrangement reduces near-term capital intensity and gives flexibility to match supply with unpredictable AI workloads — but it also cedes some control over the stack to an external operator, raising questions about resilience, vendor concentration and geopolitical exposure. 

Investors and market observers will now be watching several near-term items. First, the precise financing structure Nebius employs — how much capital it raises versus how much is secured by the Microsoft contract — will shape credit metrics and dilution risks for equity holders. Second, the timeline for Vineland’s construction and initial commercial-service dates will be scrutinised; any slippage could trigger covenant pressure on project debt. Third, regulators and customers may probe the origins and governance of Nebius’s technology stack given the company’s lineage and rapid rise in importance to critical AI infrastructure. 

Beyond the immediate winners and losers, the deal underscores a fast-changing market structure in cloud and AI infrastructure. Specialist providers that can secure long-dated offtake contracts may find it easier to attract project financing and to scale rapidly, while traditional cloud incumbents balance the tradeoffs between in-house capacity and outsourced agility. If other hyperscalers follow Microsoft’s lead, the market for GPU compute could fragment into a mix of hyperscale farms, bespoke neocloud centres and purpose-built AI campuses — a shift that would have wide implications for pricing, supply-chain investment and technology sovereignty. 

For now, Nebius’s shareholders celebrated a deal that validates the company’s strategy and lifts near-term revenue visibility. But the path from headline contract to sustained operational profitability will be closely watched: success requires execution on construction, procurement, service delivery and financing all at once. Investors pricing the stock’s dramatic move appear to be betting that Nebius can deliver on those fronts — an outcome that would reshape part of the AI infrastructure market, but one that is far from guaranteed.