Source : TechCrunch
AMSTERDAM, November 12, 2026 – Nebius, the artificial intelligence cloud company, has told investors it plans to spend $40 billion to $45 billion on capital expenditure in 2027 and expects customer prepayments and loans backed by customer contracts to cover most of it. The plan was set out with its third-quarter results and discussed on an earnings call on Thursday, as reported by TechCrunch.
In its shareholder letter, Nebius said prepayments and asset-backed financing of its existing contracts with investment-grade customers are expected to fund 75 to 85 per cent of the 2027 spending. The company added that it remains open to raising further outside capital when the cost is right, and that it holds $7.4 billion in cash and cash equivalents at the end of the quarter.
Prepayments, in which customers pay in advance for computing capacity, have become the standard structure of Nebius’s agreements, the company said. It expects $10 billion in committed customer prepayments in 2026, rising to between $17 billion and $20 billion in 2027. Nebius said prepayments on deals signed in the third quarter covered more than 100 per cent of the related capital spending, up from 50 to 60 per cent in the second quarter, and that more than 90 per cent of the contract value signed in the quarter carried a prepayment.
The company also described a second route. In July it closed the first facility under its asset-backed financing framework, a $775 million loan secured against long-term agreements with an investment-grade customer. Nebius said its agreements with Microsoft and Meta can be financed in the same way, and that it sees the approach as repeatable given more than $40 billion of similar committed revenue.
TechCrunch said the $40 billion plan was far larger than Wall Street had expected, but warned that it rests on projects already showing strain. One of Nebius’s biggest customers is Microsoft, which is paying for AI computing capacity at a data centre in Vineland, New Jersey. A Nebius filing from September 2025 put the contract value at about $17.4 billion, rising to about $19.4 billion if Microsoft takes additional capacity.
According to TechCrunch, the Vineland site is now months behind schedule. Only just over half of the Microsoft capacity is planned for delivery by the end of this year, with the remainder due in the second quarter of 2027. Nebius says the delays come from sites it does not control, while the data centres it builds itself are coming online on time or ahead of schedule and will supply most of its new capacity from 2027.
TechCrunch also pointed to a Bloomberg report last week that Microsoft is tightening oversight of projects run by third parties, including Nebius, IREN and Nscale, and is weighing whether to sign new agreements with them. That report has not been confirmed by the companies in the material reviewed by LNA.
On the call, chief revenue officer Marc Boroditsky said the Microsoft and Meta deals both came with significant prepayments that arrived well before delivery. He added that Nebius could tap prepayments to meet any extra cash needs.
The approach carries risk. Using the future value of data centres to pay for their construction works only if the projects are delivered on time and customers keep to their contracts. Delays or cancellations could leave Nebius needing to raise money elsewhere at a time when the cost of financing AI infrastructure is under close watch across the industry.
Sources: TechCrunch, Nebius shareholder letter for the third quarter of 2026 and Nebius filing with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission.
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