European technology leader NEBIUS Group NV (NBIS.US), which has pivoted in recent years to focus on providing cloud-based AI computing resources, has raised approximately $37.5 billion through the sale of convertible bonds and equity. Following the company's recent announcement of signing a massive contract with tech giant Microsoft Corporation (MSFT.US) closely related to cloud AI computing capacity, the company is seeking to acquire more land and artificial intelligence computing resources.
The AI cloud service provider on Thursday significantly increased its convertible bond issuance from an initially planned $2 billion to $27.5 billion. The company also announced the sale of approximately $1 billion in new shares, priced at $92.50 per share.
NEBIUS conducted the convertible bond sale in two tranches of approximately $1.375 billion each - one maturing in 2030 with a 1% coupon rate, and another maturing in 2032 with a 2.75% coupon rate. These bonds have a conversion price of $138.75 per share, representing a 50% premium over the stock offering price, highlighting the strong market demand for the company's debt and equity assets.
The Amsterdam-based company officially spun off from Russian internet giant Yandex last year. The collaboration with Microsoft marks a significant shift in the company's fundamental expectations, as it previously focused on providing AI infrastructure for startups and smaller enterprises, and now gradually gains the capability to provide hyperscale AI training and inference computing resources.
As of Wednesday's close, NEBIUS shares have surged 237% year-to-date to $93.39 per share, including a nearly 50% single-day surge through Tuesday's close.
**Single-Day 50% Surge Creates "AI Computing Legend"**
On September 9 (Tuesday), NEBIUS closed up approximately 49.4% in US trading, marking its largest single-day gain since listing on NASDAQ (reaching intraday highs of about 53%) and setting a new all-time high.
From an event-driven and fundamental perspective, the primary driver behind NEBIUS's stock surge is the company's massive AI computing contract with Microsoft. Microsoft chose NEBIUS mainly due to its rapidly deployable cross-regional capacity, its large AI server clusters' high compatibility with NVIDIA's high-performance AI GPU roadmap, vertically integrated AI cloud stack, and Microsoft's supply chain diversification needs.
The increased funding further validates the certainty of execution and capacity expansion, with positive feedback on performance and valuation expected to continue in the short to medium term.
Microsoft reached a multi-year agreement with NEBIUS this week worth nearly $20 billion, aimed at obtaining artificial intelligence cloud computing capacity from the technology company spun off from Russian internet giant Yandex. According to filings submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday, the major deal will generate between $17.4 billion and $19.4 billion in revenue for NEBIUS through 2031.
The AI computing demand driven by generative AI applications and AI agents on the inference side represents a vast market opportunity, expected to drive exponential growth in the artificial intelligence computing infrastructure market. "AI inference systems" are also what Jensen Huang considers NVIDIA's largest future revenue source.
Microsoft, as OpenAI's major shareholder, has long faced acute AI cloud computing shortages due to OpenAI's massive computing demands and the integration of generative AI and AI agents into Microsoft's core Office suite products. The company is addressing this through third-party partnerships (such as CoreWeave, dubbed "NVIDIA's favorite child"), and now introducing NEBIUS to diversify supply and rapidly expand computing capacity reserves.
Both NEBIUS and AI cloud computing leader CoreWeave belong to the "AI-dedicated cloud" sector, focusing on serving large model developers and enterprises' massive AI workloads through faster delivery, optimized training/inference stacks, and flexible contracts. Microsoft's collaboration with both companies helps alleviate supply bottlenecks.
NEBIUS comes standard with H100/H200 and the most advanced AI GPU product lines - GB200 based on Blackwell architecture and GB300 based on Blackwell Ultra (liquid cooling modifications underway) - meeting different TCO requirements for both training and inference, which is essential for Microsoft's multiple product lines (Azure/Copilot/GitHub, etc.).
NEBIUS is not merely a "colocation facility" but rather an integrated AI Cloud leader covering hardware, networking, and scheduling stacks, emphasizing scalability from single cards to "thousands of pre-optimized AI GPU clusters," reducing integration costs and delivery uncertainty on Microsoft's side.
Rapidly deployable regional capacity is also an important factor in Microsoft's partnership with NEBIUS. NEBIUS has presence in both the EU and US, with large-scale operating and under-construction AI server clusters primarily including: large-scale self-built AI data centers in Finland, major regional deployments in France and the US, and Vineland, New Jersey, which will soon provide massive high-performance GPU capacity for Microsoft, facilitating Microsoft's rapid access and nearby network latency optimization on the US East Coast and even Western Europe.