The One Neocloud I Keep Buying Again and Again Has a Secret

The One Neocloud I Keep Buying Again and Again Has a Secret

Alex Sirois

Wed, September 23, 2026 at 7:45 PM GMT+3 5 min read

Quick Read

• Nebius (NBIS) posted $582M in Q2 revenue, up 454% year over year, backed by a $37.5B contracted backlog that dwarfs its current annual revenue.

• Meta (META) signed a $27B five-year contract with Nebius, and NVIDIA (NVDA) holds a $2B strategic equity stake, validating the platform from both directions.

• CEO Arkady Volozh says he could sell out 2026 capacity today but is holding out for better terms, with shares already up 182% year to date.

• Just released. Our analysts combed the entire stock market and named the ten best stocks to buy right now, and Nebius Group didn't make the cut. Enter your email to see the names that beat NBIS. The report is free. Enter your email and see if any of your stocks made the cut.

I keep buying Nebius Group (NASDAQ:NBIS) because every quarter the case for owning it gets sharper. I am compounding into a business whose contracted backlog dwarfs its current revenue, whose anchor customers are the same names training the frontier models, and whose CEO keeps repeating that he could sell out next year's capacity today and is choosing to wait for better terms.

Why I Keep Hitting Buy

Nebius runs a full-stack AI cloud. It owns data centers, builds its own software stack (Nebius AI Cloud, Token Factory, Aether, and the acquired Tavily and ClarifAI assets), and sits inside NVIDIA's inner circle as an Exemplar Cloud partner on GB300 NVL72. That combination is what earns the repeat buy from me, and it is what makes Nebius unique among neoclouds.

Three Numbers That Keep the Thesis Alive

Start with growth. Q2 2026 revenue reached $582.3 million, up 454.04% year over year, ahead of the $574.65 million consensus. The AI Cloud segment alone did $574.9 million, up 514%. Annualized run-rate revenue hit $3 billion at the end of June, up 598% YoY.

Free Report, Just Released

Why Didn't NBIS Make The Top 10 List?

24/7 Wall St has helped investors make money for over two decades, and our top analysts just finished ranking the definitive Top 10 Stocks To Buy Now. Not the ten biggest companies. Not the ten everyone is arguing about. The ten best stocks to buy right now.

And NBIS didn't make the cut!

The report is free, and you can see why we think each stock is a top investment today.

Enter Your Email and See the Ten →

Now visibility. Remaining performance obligations sit at $37.5 billion, and deferred revenue climbed to $5,975.2 million from $1,577.5 million at year-end. Management reaffirmed FY 2026 revenue of $3.0B to $3.4B and ARR of $7B to $9B by year-end, at a roughly 40% adjusted EBITDA margin. Q2 group adjusted EBITDA already printed at $236 million, a 41% margin, with the AI Cloud segment at 50%.

Then funding. Cash sat at $8.04 billion. Operating cash flow was $2.3 billion in the quarter. Roughly 70% of Q2 deals came with upfront prepayment, and management expects more than $9 billion of upfront customer funding during 2026. The July $775 million asset-backed facility priced at SOFR plus 250 basis points, secured by GPUs and an investment-grade customer's contracted cash flows.

Why Not CoreWeave, Meta, Microsoft, or NVIDIA

I own NBIS instead of CoreWeave (NASDAQ:CRWV) because Nebius stacks proprietary software above the metal. I would rather buy the leveraged beneficiary than pile more into Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), which is already a Nebius customer through a $17.4B to $19.4B contract, or Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META), which signed a $27 billion five-year agreement ($12B compute plus $15B flexible capacity). NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA) itself planted a $2 billion strategic equity stake plus pre-funded warrants. When hyperscalers rent from you and your GPU supplier invests in you, that is where my dollars keep going.

The power, cooling, and networking suppliers feeding this same buildout are where a lot of the quieter money is being made (we profiled seven of them, chipmakers excluded, in a free report here: 7 Stocks Powering the AI Boom).

Risk I Live With

Three customers made up 24%, 21%, and 14% of Q2 revenue. Convertible debt carries at $8.5 billion with a fair value of $20.8 billion, so dilution is real. H1 capex ran $8.13 billion against a $20B to $25B full-year 2026 range, and GAAP operating loss was $175.9 million. I sit with that because the $37.5B backlog and customer prepayments cover most of the burn.

What Keeps the Buy Button Active

Contracted power guidance was raised to 5 gigawatts by year-end. Vera Rubin systems were already in Nebius labs at the time of the Q2 call. Shares are up 182.09% year to date, and CEO Arkady Volozh's Q3 2025 line still sits at the top of my notes: "2026 is still just the beginning." So am I.

Got $1,000? Before You Buy NBIS, Read This

If you have cash sitting in your account right now, give this two minutes. After more than two decades of helping investors beat the market, our top analysts at 24/7 Wall St. put together a definitive report on the Top 10 Stocks To Buy Today. And NBIS wasn't one of them.

They combed the entire market. It's not 10 ideas, not 10 stocks everyone is talking about, it's what their research points to as the 10 best stocks to buy right now, and it's free. Read more here and see which stocks made the list -->>

Contact editorial@247wallst.com for any questions or corrections.