Key points
- Nebius (NBIS) beat, with Q2 revenue up 454% to $582.3 million and a swing to a $236.2 million adjusted profit.
- Annual recurring revenue reached about $3 billion, and Nebius signed four AI cloud deals worth more than $1 billion each.
- CEO Arkady Volozh said demand for AI capacity continues to grow exponentially. The stock jumped about 27% and the data center group rallied with it.
- Michael Burry shorted Nebius at $211.77 two weeks ago, and near $247 that bet is now well underwater.
Nebius (NBIS) reported Wednesday morning, and the report came in as expected. Revenue in at $582.3 million, up 454% from a year ago. The stock had been up more than 15% before the open and just kept climbing, trading up around 27% Wednesday afternoon. If you wanted a clean read on whether AI demand is cooling off, you got one. It isn't.
The quarter did the talking. Nebius swung to an adjusted profit of $236.2 million, from a $21 million loss a year earlier. Its annual recurring revenue, the run-rate number this whole group gets judged on, hit about $3 billion at the end of June, up from $1.92 billion three months before. They signed four separate AI cloud deals worth more than a billion dollars each. It still lost money on the bottom line, $0.68 a share, because building this costs a fortune.
Demand is the whole story
Here's the part I keep coming back to. Nebius isn't struggling to find customers. It's struggling to build fast enough to keep up with them. CEO Arkady Volozh put it plainly: "Demand for AI capacity continues to grow exponentially, and we are converting that demand into contracted, profitable growth." That's the whole AI buildout in one sentence. The compute gets sold before it's even switched on.
The wild part is Nebius didn't even have to raise its headline number to get this reaction. It reaffirmed its year-end target of $7 to $9 billion in annual recurring revenue and left its full-year revenue guide at $3 to $3.4 billion. What it did raise was power, now expecting to end 2026 with 5 gigawatts of contracted capacity, up from the 4-plus it guided a quarter ago. When a stock rips 27% on a print where the top-line guide didn't move, that tells you the market liked everything sitting underneath it.
Now the catch, because there's always one. Nebius spent $5.66 billion on property and equipment in a single quarter. Read that again. It did $582 million in revenue and spent nearly ten times that building capacity. It's got about $8 billion in cash to keep the lights on, but the whole bull case rests on demand staying exactly this hot while those bills come due. A company spending like this feels it first if the buildout ever slows. Wednesday wasn't that day, and it might not be this year, but that's the risk you're signing up for.
Michael Burry got run over
Which brings me to Michael Burry. Two weeks ago he shorted Nebius at $211.77, and this time he shorted the actual shares instead of buying puts, which we covered when his posts went up. His bear case is that AI companies are hiding the real cost of their chips by lowballing depreciation, something he called "one of the more common frauds of the modern era." Strong words. The trouble is the stock is now near $247, so that short is roughly 16% underwater in two weeks. Burry's been early before, and he got run over on Palantir (PLTR) the same way earlier this month when it jumped 29% on earnings. His thesis might pay off down the road. It sure isn't paying off today.
It wasn't just Nebius
And it wasn't just Nebius moving. The whole data center trade came along for the ride. CoreWeave (CRWV), which crushed its own quarter Tuesday night, held that pop and added to it. The ex-miners turned AI landlords caught a bid, the memory and chip names came with them, and even the data center landlords joined in. Here's where the group stood by midday.
| Stock | What it is | Move (Aug 12, afternoon) |
|---|---|---|
| Nebius (NBIS) | Neocloud | up about 27% |
| CoreWeave (CRWV) | Neocloud | up about 19% |
| IREN | Miner turned AI cloud | up about 10% |
| Micron (MU) | AI memory | up about 7% |
| Core Scientific (CORZ) | Miner turned AI host | up about 8% |
| Oracle (ORCL) | Cloud, and another Burry short | up about 5% |
| CleanSpark (CLSK) | Miner turning to AI | up about 6% |
| Vertiv (VRT) | Data center power and cooling | up about 4% |
| Nvidia (NVDA) | The chips underneath it all | up about 3% |
| Digital Realty (DLR) | Data center REIT | up about 3% |
For months, a lot of investors have said this spending is a bubble, and that the demand won't show up to pay for it. Nebius just showed up with 454% growth, a swing to profit, and four billion-dollar contracts. These names aren't the safe way to play AI, and the spending is genuinely scary if you stare at it too long. But if you were waiting for proof the demand is real, Wednesday was it, and the whole group traded like it.
This is general market commentary and opinion, not investment advice. I am not a financial advisor. Prices are intraday on August 12, 2026 and will change. Markets can go down as well as up, and you can lose money. Always do your own research and consider speaking with a licensed financial professional before making any investment decision.
