Nebius Rises on $27 Billion Meta Deal and $4.34 Billion Convertible Funding
Nebius Group N.V. (NBIS) has emerged as a primary competitor to CoreWeave, scaling its AI cloud footprint through massive hardware partnerships and long-term customer commitments. Unlike CoreWeave, which is heavily leveraged, Nebius maintains a healthier short-term balance sheet but has recently accumulated significant debt to fund its aggressive expansion.
As of March 31, 2026, Nebius reported a highly liquid position with $9.30 billion in cash and a current ratio of 8.33. However, its total debt has risen to $9.50 billion. Nebius is burning cash to build out gigawatt-scale data center infrastructure, posting capital expenditures of $2.47 billion in Q1 2026 against operating cash flow of $2.26 billion, resulting in negative free cash flow of -$214.9 million.
To fund this capital program, Nebius closed a massive $4.34 billion convertible debt funding round on March 23, 2026 (upsized from an initial $3.75 billion proposal that temporarily depressed the stock). This convertible debt represents a massive dilutive overhang for equity holders but provides the company with the immediate cash needed to secure next-generation hardware.
Underwritten by Meta
Similar to CoreWeave, Nebius's growth is being heavily underwritten by Meta Platforms (META). On March 16, 2026, Nebius announced a massive long-term AI infrastructure supply agreement with Meta worth up to approximately $27 billion over a five-year period:
- $12 billion is dedicated to providing capacity starting in early 2027, based on one of the first large-scale deployments of the upcoming NVIDIA Vera Rubin platform.
- $15 billion represents a commitment by Meta to purchase any leftover capacity on upcoming Nebius clusters that are not sold to third-party customers.
This means Meta has single-handedly committed $48 billion in long-term contracts to CoreWeave ($21B) and Nebius ($27B) within a single month (March-April 2026), underwriting the entire business models of the two largest independent neoclouds.
Institutional Endorsement
Nebius's rapid scale has attracted high-profile backing. On May 29, 2026, Leopold Aschenbrenner's Situational Awareness Fund disclosed a 5.6% stake in Nebius valued at $2.6 billion, sending the stock to its 52-week high and pushing its market capitalization to $67.16 billion. While public markets are highly bullish on Nebius's growth (with the stock up 176.5% over the past three months), the firm remains entirely exposed to Meta's capital spending appetite and the operational execution of its physical data center buildout.