It's not often that a hypergrowth company complains about too much demand. But for Nebius Group NV (NASDAQ:NBIS), that's precisely the story. We are "learning to say no to customers," admitted Chief Revenue Officer Marc Boroditsky, during the company’s third quarter earnings call, after selling out of every megawatt of capacity in the third quarter — a problem most companies would kill to have.
- Track NBIS stock here.
Revenue surged 355% year-over-year to $146.1 million, even as the company missed estimates on topline. The shortfall wasn't about weak demand — it was about physics. Every data center Nebius operates is already booked solid. Even new facilities in the U.K. and Israel sold out before launch, and the company now plans to scale to 2.5 gigawatts of contracted power by 2026.
Read Also: Nvidia-Backed Nebius (NBIS) Has Crashed 24%— But Whales Are Treating It Like A Fire Sale
Too Much Success, Not Enough Power
Executives described the situation as a "capacity bottleneck" — the limiting factor on growth. "Everything we deploy, we sell," CEO Arkady Volozh said, adding that supply constraints, not competition, are shaping the company's strategy.
That demand imbalance isn't just coming from Big Tech customers like Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:META) and Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT)— Nebius' smaller clients, including startups like Cursor and Black Forest Labs, are lining up for compute they can't yet get. The situation has reached a point where Mark even joked that one of his new skills this quarter was "learning to say no" to eager customers.
The irony? Nebius' biggest challenge is the one problem most AI firms wish they had — scarcity.
The Bottleneck Business Model
Nebius' bullishness is hard to miss. The company raised its 2026 ARR outlook to $7 billion–9 billion, more than half already booked, and continues to invest heavily in new GPU-heavy data centers. But growth comes at a cost: its expansion now depends on capital, permits, and the pace of the power grid itself.
For now, "sold out" has become Nebius' default status — and "no" its most valuable word.
Read Next:
- Nebius Vs. Palantir: The AI Infrastructure War At 100x Sales
Photo: Piotr Swat/Shutterstock