Nebius surges 18%, outperforming AI cloud stocks CoreWeave, Cloudflare

Nebius Group posted the kind of quarterly earnings that make analysts spill their coffee. The AI cloud infrastructure company saw its shares jump 18% to $227.70 on August 12 after reporting Q2 revenue of $582.3 million, a 454% year-over-year increase that topped consensus estimates of $572.75 million. The stock’s year-to-date performance now sits at roughly 131%. For context, that means a $10K investment in Nebius at the start of the year would be worth about $23K today. The numbers behind the rally Nebius’s AI cloud segment, which accounts for 98% of total revenue, grew more than 500% year-over-year. That kind of concentration in a single business line would normally make investors nervous. In this case, it’s the concentration that’s making them money. Four landmark contracts exceeding $1 billion each anchored the quarter. Perhaps more importantly, 70% of those contracts included customer prepayments. Customers paying before they even use the service is the corporate equivalent of a restaurant with a three-month waitlist. It signals demand that outstrips supply. Management pointed to durable demand trends and near-term capacity constraints, a combination that typically supports pr...