Key highlights from Nebius Group's Q1 letter to shareholders

May 13, 2026 7:13 AM

(Updated - May 13, 2026 7:21 AM EDT)

Nebius Group issued Q1 2026 letter to shareholders on Wednesday, here are the most important points:

Nebius Q1 2026: Explosive Growth, Massive Capacity Push, and Strategic AI Acquisitions

1. Financial Performance Exceeds Expectations

Revenue: $399.0 million, up 684% YoY and 75% QoQ, driven by AI cloud scaling, strong pricing, and utilization.
ARR: $1.92 billion as of March end, up 674% YoY and 54% from Dec 2025.
EBITDA turned positive at $129.5 million, with AI cloud segment margin at 45%.
Operating leverage: Cost of revenue fell to 26% of revenue (from 49%), product dev to 17% (from 72%), SG&A to 36% (from 120%).

2. Massive Fundraising & Strong Balance Sheet

3. Capacity Expansion Accelerates

Contracted power already >3.5 GW, surpassing 2026 year-end target of 3 GW.
New guidance: >4 GW contracted power by year-end.
New owned sites:
- Pennsylvania: Up to 1.2 GW AI factory (delivery starting 2027).
- Finland: 310 MW site (one of Europe’s largest dedicated AI factories).
- Missouri broke ground; active construction in Alabama and New Jersey.
Owned capacity now accounts for >75% of contracted power.
Expect 800MW – 1GW of connected power by year-end.

4. Strategic Acquisitions Deepen AI Stack

Tavity (agentic search) – announced Feb.
Eigen AI (inference at scale, #1 ranked by NVIDIA) – announced May.
Clarifai (inference optimization) – announced May; founder/CEO joins as SVP of Research.
Goal: Full-stack AI cloud from infrastructure → inference → agentic platforms.

5. Key Partnerships & Customer Momentum

NVIDIA Exemplar Cloud status on GB300 NVL72 for training (rare, multi-generation).
Deepened NVIDIA collaboration on inference/agentic software + AI factory design.
Pipeline grew ~3.5x QoQ – record generation.
Notable customer wins: Sword Health, Revolut, Monday.com, 1X Technologies (robotics), major biotech/molecular biology firms.

6. Other Businesses & Investments

Arvide (autonomous vehicles): Fleet doubled YTD; robot delivery launched in Philadelphia.
TripleTen (edtech): 10% YoY revenue growth; ~5,000 new students in Q1.
ClickHouse equity stake revalued to 15B(SeriesD),contributing15B(SeriesD),contributing781M non-cash gain.
Toloka integration: Tandem solution brings human-in-the-loop via Model Context Protocol.

7. Guidance & Outlook

Reaffirming 2026 revenue guidance: 3.0B–3.0B–3.4 billion.
Targeting 7B–7B–9 billion ARR.
Plan to raise mid-single-digit billions in debt (asset-backed or corporate) in near term.
No ATM program utilization yet, but evaluating.

8. Risk & Forward-Looking Notes

Heavy dependence on GPU capex ($2.5 billion in Q1) and data center construction.
Success depends on securing financing, bringing capacity online, and managing vendor concentration (NVIDIA, etc.).
Useful life of server/network equipment extended from 4 to 5 years (prospective from 2026).

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