Meta Platforms Inc. will pay up to $27 billion over the next five years for access to cloud provider Nebius Group NV’s artificial intelligence infrastructure, and plans to spend aggressively to compete with industry-leading Frontier models.
Nebius, a so-called neocloud that operates data centers and has a strategic partnership with Nvidia Corp., will provide $12 billion of dedicated capacity to Meta starting in early 2027, the Dutch company announced in a statement Monday. Meta also committed to purchasing up to $15 billion in additional capacity that cloud providers are building for third-party customers.
The spending is one of the largest single deals Meta has signed and confirms that the Instagram and Facebook owner is seeking more computing power to enhance the development of its AI products. Last year, the company signed a separate $3 billion deal with Nebius.
Nevius shares rose 15% in premarket trading. The stock, which closed at $112.95 in New York on Friday, has nearly quadrupled in the past 12 months. Meta rose 2.8% before the market opened after closing at $613.71.
Meta and some of its largest technology companies are expected to spend about $650 billion in 2026 to build data centers and buy other infrastructure in anticipation of an explosion in AI services in the coming years. Meta has made AI a top priority for the company and is investing heavily to compete with rivals such as OpenAI and Google. It has also signed multibillion-dollar partnership deals with Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. for AI infrastructure since the beginning of the year. And Meta develops its own chips in-house.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg said last year that Meta would spend $600 billion on U.S. infrastructure projects by 2028. To do this, Meta relies on profits from its advertising business, but it also raises external capital to fund infrastructure projects. The company has developed its own high-end models and has built several AI products, including chatbots that can be used within various apps.
A Meta spokesperson confirmed the Nebius deal and said the partnership and strategy to diversify its AI technology stack are part of “building a more resilient and flexible infrastructure.”
Amsterdam-based Nebius, which spun off from Russian internet giant Yandex in 2024, is one of the few new entrants to capitalize on the AI boom by building customized data centers to train models and run services like ChatGPT.
Nvidia has leveraged its vast resources to fund this new breed of neocloud, which competes with major cloud computing providers such as Google and Amazon.com Inc. Last week, Nvidia announced it would invest $2 billion in Nebius, spurring a 16% jump in the Dutch company’s stock price.
Much of Nvidia’s funding goes to companies that buy its chips, leading to criticism that this kind of cyclical investment is fueling a bubble. In January, Nvidia announced a similar $2 billion investment in Nebius competitor CoreWeave Inc. to roll out its products. This year, it invested $30 billion in OpenAI and participated in a $2 billion funding round for UK neocloud Nscale.
—With assistance from Dina Bass.
