Nebius Group is closing in on its chief rival after the artificial-intelligence cloud provider reported better-than-expected quarterly results on Wednesday.
The company has emerged as one of the foremost neoclouds, providing additional cloud-computing capacity at a time when AI data centers and the power to run them are scarce. Getting those data centers online is the next challenge.
Nebius stock jumped 16% on Wednesday. Shares have climbed 114% this year and nearly 400% over the last 12 months as of Tuesday’s closing bell. CoreWeave, which had a mixed earnings report last week, rose 0.8%.
Nebius posted an adjusted loss of $100.3 million in the first quarter, deeper than its $83.6 million loss a year ago but much better than analysts’ consensus call of a $174 million deficit. Revenue totaled $399 million, more than seven times last year’s figure of $55.3 million and above Wall Street’s call for $375.1 million.
Perhaps most importantly, the company announced a new data center in Pennsylvania with 1.2 gigawatts of contracted capacity. That gives Nebius seven sites worldwide with at least 100 megawatts of capacity, up from one at the end of 2025. It lifted its guidance for contracted power to 4 gigawatts by the end of 2026, up from a previous target of 3 gigawatts.
“We continue to see unprecedented demand across the market,” CEO Arkady Volozh wrote in a letter to shareholders. “Compute and cloud needs are vastly exceeding capacity as more industries embrace AI and companies move beyond experimentation to real-world applications.”
The stellar results come a day after Nebius announced it would add the core engineering and research team from AI lab Clarifai and license the company’s compute technology. The deal will help Nebius deliver inference solutions, which refers to using trained AI models to solve problems and complete tasks.
With hyperscalers locked in an arms race to secure data-center capacity, outfitting those data centers quickly is how neoclouds win business. That means Nebius and CoreWeave are in an arms race of their own.
The similarities are uncanny: Nebius now has over 3.5 gigawatts of contracted capacity, the exact same figure CoreWeave reported last week. Nebius has a five-year deal worth up to $27 billion with Meta Platforms. CoreWeave unveiled its own expanded multiyear deal with Meta last month.
No wonder investors are pricing in a close battle between the pair. Nebius was on track to surpass a market capitalization of $50 billion on Wednesday, according to Dow Jones Market Data. CoreWeave, which itself has climbed 51% this year, was at $58.5 billion.
The main difference comes down to active power. CoreWeave already has 1 gigawatt of compute capacity up and running. Nebius is still months behind, targeting 800 megawatts to 1 gigawatt by the end of the year.
“We are pursuing a twin-track strategy: bringing capacity online to support near-term growth, and securing land and power commitments that extend well beyond this year,” Volozh wrote.
While both companies continue to take heavy losses, CoreWeave’s advantage in active power also means it is bringing in more money. Analysts polled by FactSet expect the company to have $18.3 billion in annual recurring revenue by the end of the year. Nebius has guided for $7 billion to $9 billion.
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