Nebius Group, the Amsterdam-based AI cloud company listed on Nasdaq, reported third-quarter 2026 results on November 12 and used its shareholder letter to describe a much larger build-out than analysts had modeled. For 2027 the company expects revenue of $12 billion to $13 billion, about four times its 2026 level, against capital expenditure of $40 billion to $45 billion sized for more than one gigawatt of new capacity. CNBC reported that the capex range compared with a FactSet consensus of $28.77 billion. The shares fell about 16 percent during the session, according to CNBC, and TechCrunch put the closing drop at 17 percent.
The quarter itself was strong on paper. Nebius reported revenue of $980.8 million, up 571 percent from a year earlier and 68 percent from the second quarter, with adjusted EBITDA of $465.8 million and a net loss of $37.5 million, compared with a loss of $119.6 million a year before. About $325 million of the revenue was non-recurring and came from what the company calls its asset-light model, in which it deploys its architecture and cloud platform on capacity funded by partners. Annualized run-rate revenue reached $6.4 billion at the end of September. CNBC noted that revenue beat the LSEG consensus of $907.5 million.
The financing plan is the core of the story. Nebius says prepayments and asset-backed financing against existing investment-grade contracts should cover 75 to 85 percent of its 2027 capex, and it expects customer prepayments of $10 billion in 2026 and $17 billion to $20 billion in 2027. According to the company, prepayments on deals signed in the third quarter covered more than 100 percent of the associated capex, up from 50 to 60 percent in the second quarter. So far this year it has also raised $5.75 billion of convertible notes, about $1 billion through an at-the-market program, a $775 million asset-backed facility and a $3.5 billion senior secured facility with Citi, and it reported $7.4 billion in cash. It names its Microsoft and Meta agreements as contracts that can be financed the same way. All of these are company statements.
The 2026 outlook was adjusted. Nebius now expects revenue at the low end of its $3.0 billion to $3.4 billion range, against an LSEG consensus of $3.37 billion cited by CNBC, and capex of about $27 billion, above the earlier $20 billion to $25 billion range. It moved its annualized run-rate target: instead of $7 billion to $9 billion by December, it now expects more than $7 billion in February. The company attributes the shift to third-party capacity that slipped into the first half of 2027 and says the underlying contracts remain in place. It also says it has more than 4 gigawatts of contracted power and still expects 5 gigawatts by year-end.
The delay with the most scrutiny is in New Jersey, where Microsoft has contracted capacity at a site operated by a third party, DataOne. Nebius says it now expects to deliver more than half of that capacity by the end of the year and the remaining tranches in the second quarter of 2027, after DataOne began retiring temporary power generation ahead of a move to Bloom Energy fuel cells. TechCrunch reports that the Microsoft contract is worth up to $19.4 billion and that, according to Nebius's own summary, Microsoft may terminate affected service after a grace period if dates are missed and no alternative capacity is offered, with financial penalties for late delivery. TechCrunch adds that the investigative site Floodlight found at least 45 gas generators operating at the site in August without permits, and that New Jersey regulators fined the facility $1.1 million. Nebius did not say whether Microsoft has agreed to the new dates, though it says Microsoft has been part of the planning process, and it stresses that data centers it builds itself are on time or ahead of schedule.
The results landed in a nervous week for neocloud operators. CNBC notes that CoreWeave and IREN had reported better-than-expected numbers days earlier, after weeks of selling driven by doubts about how the AI build-out will be paid for. Chief executive Arkady Volozh framed the open questions as how fast the build-out can happen and who will pay for it. Several points deserve caution. The 2027 figures are forward-looking guidance, the pre-tax breakeven assumes a five-year depreciation life for compute, and the prepayment mix is something the company says it chooses by contract type. TechCrunch, citing Bloomberg, also reports that Microsoft is tightening oversight of third-party projects, a claim this article has not independently checked.