The 5-Gigawatt Wager: Nebius's Capacity Pivot Draws Bulls, Bears, and a New Jersey Crowd
Published on 08/18/2026 at 14:51 | Redaktion boerse-global.de
There is a peculiar arithmetic emerging around Nebius that has little to do with its share price and everything to do with how the AI infrastructure trade is now being priced. The company's decision to raise its contracted power target for this year from 4 gigawatts to more than 5 gigawatts — announced alongside second-quarter results — has effectively turned forward capacity into the currency that matters most. Bank of America responded by lifting its price target from $280 to $310, maintaining a buy rating, and framing the move as a signal of pricing power rather than a gamble on demand.
The numbers behind that confidence are striking. Revenue for the second quarter came in at $582.3 million, a 454 percent jump year over year, with the AI cloud segment alone expanding 514 percent and now accounting for virtually the entire business. Adjusted EBITDA of $236.2 million blew past the $168.8 million analysts had penciled in, while first-half revenue reached $981.3 million. Reuters reported that the value of signed AI cloud contracts had nearly quadrupled, with four individual deals averaging above $1 billion each. The company also stated that all capacity planned for 2027 could already be sold at current terms — a claim that underpins its full-year guidance of $3 billion to $3.4 billion in revenue and the medium-term target of a $7 billion to $9 billion annualized run rate.
The market's initial response to those figures was oddly muted — the stock slipped 0.5 percent in the session following the release, suggesting the rally had already priced in the good news. That rally had been substantial: shares climbed more than 34 percent in a single day on the back of the results and a similarly strong showing from CoreWeave, then kept running. Over the seven trading days leading into Bank of America's target hike, the stock gained 43 percent. It now trades at €238.45 after a 2.7 percent advance, roughly 8.6 percent below its 52-week high of €261.00 and more than 340 percent above its yearly low.
Not everyone is convinced the trajectory is sustainable. DA Davidson struck a contrarian note, cutting its price target and maintaining a neutral rating, citing delays at a planned data center expansion in Vineland, New Jersey, that may not be completed this year. The project has drawn local opposition — residents have raised concerns about water usage, noise, and air quality at public hearings, with a planning board decision still pending. For DA Davidson, the episode illustrates a broader risk: Nebius's capacity bet depends not just on demand but on the ability to secure concrete, power, and cooling water as quickly as it can raise capital.
Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying Nebius?
The company's planned capital expenditure of $20 billion to $25 billion for 2026 and a backlog of roughly $40 billion underscore the scale of that ambition. Whether those figures translate into durable margins will only become clear once the infrastructure is actually built and utilized — a point that cuts to the heart of the debate between bulls and skeptics.
The loudest skeptic is Michael Burry, who has expanded his short position against Nebius. His argument targets the company's accounting: Nebius extended the depreciation period for its servers from four to five years, which Burry calculates implies an annual value decline of about 50 percent on its contracts. His assessment is blunt — Nebius, he says, is showing what the peak of a boom looks like.
The stock closed at €232.15 on Monday, down 3.1 percent in what analysts described as profit-taking rather than a fresh negative catalyst. It remains roughly 82 percent above its 200-day moving average and about 11 percent below its 52-week high — the signature of a market that still believes in the capacity wager more than it fears the obstacles in its path.
The company's annual general meeting in Amsterdam on August 25 may bring some clarity, though the fundamental tension is unlikely to resolve quickly. For now, Nebius sits at the intersection of three forces: record growth, construction realities, and accounting skepticism. The market's verdict, at least for the moment, is that the first outweighs the other two.
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