Meta signs $27B deal with Nebius as AI infrastructure spending hits new heights
What's the deal? Meta Platforms has signed a five-year deal worth up to $27 billion with Nebius GroupDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, a Dutch cloud provider, for AI computing infrastructure. Nebius will provide $12 billion in dedicated capacity starting in early 2027, with Meta committing to purchase up to $15 billion in additional capacity on top. Nebius shares jumped 15% on the news.
Why now? Meta has made AI its top priority and is racing to keep pace with rivals like OpenAI and Google. The company and its largest tech peers are expected to spend roughly $650 billion on data centres and infrastructure in 2026 alone. Chief executive Mark ZuckerbergDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → has said Meta will spend $600 billion on US infrastructure projects by 2028. The Nebius deal is one of the largest single contracts Meta has ever signed — and follows a separate $3 billion deal it struck with Nebius in 2025.
Nebius is well positioned to deliver. The Amsterdam-based neocloud, which split off from Russian internet giant Yandex in 2024, has a strategic partnership with Nvidia — which has invested $2 billion in the company and is supporting its path to 5GW of capacity by 2030Dealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →. The new deal will use Nvidia's next-generation Vera Rubin AI infrastructure platform, expected to be available in the second half of 2026.
The company targets $7–9 billion in ARR and 800MW–1GW of connected power by end-2026 — a roughly 6–7x jump from the $1.2 billion ARR it recorded at end-2025, underpinned largely by contracted capacity.
What could go wrong? Nebius is a relatively young, fast-scaling company taking on an enormous commitment. Delivering $12 billion in dedicated capacity on time — while simultaneously building out additional capacity for third-party customers — is an operational challenge of considerable scale.
There is also a broader risk hanging over the neocloud sector. Nvidia has been investing heavily in companies that buy its chips, prompting criticism that such circular investments are inflating a bubble. If AI spending cools or Meta's priorities shift, these infrastructure bets could prove costly.
The signal: The deal is the latest sign that hyperscalers are no longer enough. Meta, Google, and others are diversifying beyond traditional cloud providers like AWSDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → and Microsoft Azure, turning to a new generation of neoclouds — leaner, AI-native infrastructure operators — to meet surging compute demand. Nebius, CoreWeave, and Nscale are all benefiting from this shift, backed in part by Nvidia capital.
The scale of these commitments is striking. A single infrastructure contract worth $27 billion would have been unthinkable five years ago. Today it is a routine headline. The infrastructure layer of the AI economy is consolidating fast, and the companies that lock in capacity now are betting the demand will be there to justify it.
Sources:
Nebius
Reuters
CNBC
Bloomberg
DataCentre Magazine
The Wall Street Journal
Nebius
SEC
Image credit:
Nebius
J.V.
