Nebius Group NV today disclosed that it has won a $3 billion contract to provide Meta Platforms Inc. with data center infrastructure.

The company nevertheless ended the trading session down 7%. The selloff was likely a response to the quarterly results it released along with the announcement of the Meta deal. Nebius more than tripled its revenue year-over-year in the three months ended Sept. 30, but still fell short of analyst expectations.

The Amsterdam-based company will lease an unspecified amount of artificial intelligence infrastructure to Meta for three years. Nebius operates a cloud platform that provides access to multiple Nvidia Corp. graphics card varieties, block storage and other hardware resources. It also offers managed versions of open-source tools such as Slurm, a Kubernetes alternative that is widely used in AI training projects.

“Over the next three months, we plan to deploy the capacity needed to service the agreement,” Nebius Chief Executive Officer Arkady Volozh wrote of the Meta deal in a letter to shareholders. “In fact, demand for this capacity was overwhelming, and the size of the contract was limited to the amount of capacity that we had available.”

The deal comes two months after Nebius won an even larger AI infrastructure contract from Microsoft Corp. Under that agreement, it will provide the tech giant with access to up to $19.4 billion worth of hardware hosted in its New Jersey data center (pictured). The facility, which is based on a custom design, is set to open by the end of year with an initial capacity of 100 megawatts.

Nebius’ AI infrastructure business is its primary revenue driver. The unit’s sales surged 400% year-over-year in the third quarter. Nebius also has two other business units, Avride and TripleTen, that compete in the autonomous vehicle and online learning markets, respectively.

The company’s total revenue rose 355%, to $146.1 million. It missed the consensus estimate, which forecast sales of $155 million.

Nebius’ losses also grew significantly in the third quarter. The company’s net income loss widened from $43.6 million in the third quarter of 2024 to $119.6 million, about $20 million more than what analysts had forecast. However, the company significantly narrowed its loss in terms of adjusted EBITA, or earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization.

Nebius expects to achieve annualized revenues of $7 billion to $9 billion by the end of 2026. It plans to deliver that growth by significantly expanding its data center capacity. Nebius hopes to end 2026 with 2.5 gigawatts of contracted power, a metric it uses to track data center sites under construction. 

The company will finance the upcoming data centers by raising new capital. In conjunction with the release of its earnings report today, Nebius announced plans to sell up to 25 million shares through an at-the-market offering. It also intends to raise debt financing. 

Photo: Nebius