AMSTERDAM, Nov. 12, 2026 | Nebius Group outlined $40 billion to $45 billion in planned 2027 capital spending on its third-quarter earnings call, well above Wall Street's expectations, and said customer prepayments and loans backed by customer contracts should cover up to 85% of it, TechCrunch reported. The AI cloud provider also cut its 2026 revenue forecast by $200 million to $3 billion, blaming delays at third-party data center sites, and its shares closed down 17%.
What Nebius Reported and How It Plans to Pay
Third-quarter revenue reached $981 million, up 571% from a year earlier, though about a third of it came from a one-time payment tied to a new partnership model. Nebius forecast 2027 revenue of $12 billion to $13 billion, said it expects to reach pre-tax breakeven in the fourth quarter and ended the quarter with $7.4 billion in cash.
The financing plan rests on Nebius's biggest customers. Chief Financial Officer Maria Del Dado Alonso Sanchez named the company's Microsoft and Meta contracts as the kind that can be financed through prepayments and asset-backed loans against investment-grade contracts. Chief Revenue Officer Marc Boroditsky said both deals came with significant prepayments received well before delivery, that prepayments on new third-quarter deals more than cover the cost of building the associated capacity, and that Nebius could "tap prepayments to shore up any additional cash requirements."
The Microsoft Delay Behind the Forecast Cut
The delays center on Vineland, New Jersey, where third-party operator DataOne runs a site serving Nebius's Microsoft contract, which is worth up to $19.4 billion. The site is months behind schedule. Just over half of the Microsoft capacity is now planned for delivery by year-end, with the rest in the second quarter of 2027, after original tranches were slated for 2025 and 2026. Under Nebius's SEC summary of the contract, Microsoft can terminate affected service after a grace period if dates are missed and no alternative capacity is offered, and the deal includes late-delivery penalties.
Nebius said Microsoft "has been part of the planning process" but did not say whether Microsoft agreed to the new dates, and Microsoft has not publicly canceled anything, TechCrunch reported. Chief product and infrastructure officer Andrey Korolenko said DataOne "decided to wind down the temporary generation faster than it was expected" as the site moves to Bloom Energy fuel cells. Nebius says its own data centers are on time or ahead of schedule and will supply most of its new capacity from 2027. "Building at this scale is hard, and delays are part of our industry right now," CEO Arkady Volozh said. "We are not immune."
The quarter shows both the strength and the weak point of the so-called neocloud model. Hyperscalers such as Microsoft and Meta are willing to prepay for GPU capacity, which lets a company like Nebius plan spending far beyond its current revenue without raising all of it up front. That works only if sites are delivered on schedule, and Nebius's forecast cut came from facilities it does not control. Bloomberg separately reported that Microsoft is tightening oversight of third-party projects, including those of Nebius, IREN and Nscale. For businesses renting AI capacity from specialized providers, the takeaway is practical: ask which sites your capacity comes from, who operates them and what the contract says about late delivery. Our AI spending statistics page tracks the wider infrastructure build-out.
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Frequently Asked Questions
How much does Nebius plan to spend in 2027?
Nebius plans $40 billion to $45 billion in capital spending in 2027, according to its third-quarter 2026 earnings call. It expects customer prepayments and asset-backed financing of investment-grade contracts, such as its Microsoft and Meta deals, to cover up to 85% of that amount.
Why did Nebius cut its 2026 revenue forecast?
Nebius cut its 2026 revenue forecast by $200 million to $3 billion, citing delays at third-party sites, including a New Jersey facility run by DataOne that serves its Microsoft contract. The company says its own data centers are on time or ahead of schedule.