Nebius’ Backlog Is Doing the Heavy Lifting for NBIS

Nebius has a problem many investors would like to have: demand is arriving faster than the company can build the data-center capacity to serve it.

The Amsterdam-based AI cloud operator reported $37.49 billion in remaining performance obligations at June 30, a pool of contracted but unrecognized revenue tied entirely to its AI cloud business. Nebius said more than a third of that amount should convert into revenue over the 24 months ending June 30, 2028, with another 40% scheduled for the following two years. That is the less glamorous reason investors keep returning to NBIS. The story has paperwork behind it.

The operating numbers are catching up. Second-quarter revenue surged 454% from a year earlier to $582.3 million, while adjusted EBITDA swung to $236.2 million from a $21 million loss. AI cloud revenue reached $575 million, and the company said the segment produced a 50% adjusted EBITDA margin. Annualized revenue run-rate hit $3 billion in June.

More important for a capital-hungry infrastructure company, customers are helping finance the machinery. Roughly 70% of second-quarter deals included prepayments covering 50% to 60% of associated capital expenditures. Nebius expects more than $9 billion in customer prepayments during 2026, while management says the payback period on the quarter’s deals has compressed to one year and 10 months from a historical two-to-three-year range.

Pricing is moving in the same direction. Four major contracts signed in the quarter averaged more than $1 billion in total contract value, with annual contract value above $20 million per megawatt. A capacity-auction pilot for NVIDIA Blackwell systems produced the highest price Nebius has cleared for those chips, and the company says it could sell all of its 2027 capacity today.

The risks are substantial. Nebius spent $8.13 billion on property and equipment in the first half, posted a $190.4 million second-quarter net loss and raised roughly $5.75 billion through convertible notes in August. Execution, power availability and future dilution now matter as much as demand.

Still, Microsoft’s agreement worth up to about $19.4 billion, Meta’s multibillion-dollar commitments and NVIDIA’s $2 billion investment give the model institutional validation. The bull case is not that AI enthusiasm lasts forever. It is that customers are paying Nebius to build the scarce infrastructure before the market decides whether the hype fades.