Nebius quintuples AI cloud revenue and says it could sell out 2027 capacity today

by Henry Nakamura · August 12, 2026

Earnings Reporter, Earnings Dispatch

Nebius Group delivered the kind of quarter that makes the debate about AI infrastructure demand feel briefly settled. The Nvidia-backed cloud provider reported second-quarter revenue of $582.3 million, up 454% from a year earlier and ahead of the $572.75 million analysts had modeled, according to Benzinga. Shares jumped 15.7% to around $223.50 in premarket trading Wednesday, per Schaeffer's Investment Research, and held a double-digit gain into the session.

Nearly all of it came from one place. The AI cloud business generated $574.9 million, or 98% of group revenue, growing 514% year over year at margins of 49.7%, Benzinga reported. Annualized run-rate revenue finished the quarter at $3 billion, a 56% step up from $1.9 billion at the end of the first quarter, according to Blockspace's account of the results.

The profitability turn was the less-advertised surprise. Adjusted EBITDA came in at $236.2 million against a $21 million loss in the same quarter last year, per Benzinga, with the margin reaching 41% versus 32% in the first quarter, Blockspace reported. On the bottom line, Nebius posted a GAAP loss of 68 cents per share where analysts had penciled in a loss of 86 cents, according to 24/7 Wall St. On an adjusted basis the shortfall was 12 cents against an expected 67-cent loss, Schaeffer's said.

What separated this report from a routine beat was the contract disclosure. Nebius closed four AI cloud deals in the quarter each averaging more than $1 billion, Benzinga reported, with new-customer contract value rising more than ninefold sequentially. Roughly 70% of those agreements carried customer prepayments, which the company said compresses payback on deployed capital to about 1.8 years from a historical range of two to three years. Committed customer obligations now exceed $40 billion.

Chief executive Arkady Volozh framed the terms rather than the volume as the story, telling investors the company had signed its largest AI cloud agreements on its best economics yet and describing the pricing as a change in kind rather than degree, per 24/7 Wall St. Benzinga reported he went further on the call, saying Nebius could sell its entire 2027 capacity on current terms immediately but is deliberately holding some back to serve existing customers' near-term needs.

That confidence is being funded aggressively. Nebius spent roughly $5.7 billion on capital expenditure in the quarter and is guiding to $20 billion to $25 billion for the full year, Blockspace reported, against $8.04 billion of cash and $2.25 billion of operating cash flow generated in the period, per Benzinga. The company raised its year-end 2026 contracted power target to 5 gigawatts from more than 4 gigawatts and said it intends to deploy more than a gigawatt annually starting in 2027.

Full-year guidance was left intact: revenue of $3.0 billion to $3.4 billion, an adjusted EBITDA margin near 40%, and an exit annualized run-rate of $7 billion to $9 billion, according to Blockspace. Notably, 24/7 Wall St. reported that the four landmark contracts feed primarily into 2027 revenue, meaning the quarter's headline bookings are largely absent from this year's numbers.

The reaction also had a mechanical component. Schaeffer's noted that 61.07 million Nebius shares were sold short heading into the print, equal to 28.8% of the float and more than three days of average volume, while the stock's 50-day put/call volume ratio of 1.95 ranked above 99% of readings over the past year. Positioning was defensive into a report that landed the other way. Even after Wednesday's move the stock sits roughly 36% below its June 22 record close of $299.86, though it remains up about 130.8% for 2026.