The AI Stock That's Been Outperforming Nvidia Since January

Chipmaker Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) remains the poster child of the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution, and even from its lofty perch as the world's largest company, it has gained around 20% so far in 2026. However, another AI stock has delivered far stronger returns: Shares of Nebius (NASDAQ: NBIS), a fast-growing data center infrastructure player, have surged by almost 143% over the same period.

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Nvidia also appears confident about Nebius' growth prospects. In March 2026, it announced a strategic partnership and agreed to invest $2 billion in Nebius for an approximately 8.3% ownership stake in the company. Under this partnership, Nvidia will provide the AI processors that will allow Nebius to deploy more than 5 gigawatts of data center capacity by 2030.

Robust financials

Nebius is focused on building data center infrastructure that's optimized for AI training, inference (running AI models in real time), and emerging agentic AI workloads (in which AI systems autonomously perform multistep tasks).

The company's most recent financial report highlights its business momentum. In the first quarter, revenues surged 684% year over year to $399 million. Nebius' AI business performed even better, with revenue growing by 841% year over year to $390 million, accounting for 98% of total sales. The AI business exited the first quarter with annualized run rate revenue (an annualized projection based on its latest quarterly revenue) of $1.9 billion, up by more than 50% sequentially. Management now expects revenues of between $3 billion and $3.4 billion and an adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) margin of nearly 40% in 2026.

Strong customer base

Nebius sold out its available data center capacity in the first quarter, with demand continuing to exceed supply. That imbalance is giving the company significant pricing power.

Nebius' growing customer base is another major strength. Meta Platforms and Microsoft are major clients. The company's recently expanded deal with Meta Platforms is valued at $27 billion over five years and could become even more valuable if demand for AI processing capacity remains strong. The company's AI infrastructure deal with Microsoft is worth $17.4 billion over five years. Nebius also remains on schedule with its Microsoft-related capacity commitments. Management notes that both deals could give the company access to billions of dollars in financing at attractive rates to expand its cloud infrastructure.

Nebius' clients also include Revolut, Monday.com, and robotics company 1X Technologies. It is seeing growing interest from industries such as manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, heavy equipment, and energy. Customers are increasingly making upfront payments to Nebius to secure scarce AI computing capacity.

Nebius is also expanding beyond simply renting AI computing power. The company has acquired Tavily, Clarifai, and Eigen AI to expand its presence into faster-growing areas such as AI inference and agentic AI. It's aiming to position itself as a full-stack AI platform, which could help it deepen customer relationships.

However, certain risks cannot be ignored. Nebius raised its 2026 capital expenditure forecast to between $20 billion and $25 billion, up from its prior estimated range of $16 billion to $20 billion. That makes it a riskier investment than Nvidia, especially since it may need to raise more funds to sustain the pace of its build-out. In line with that, it may have to sell more stock (and dilute existing investors) -- and leadership has already set up an "at the market" program that would allow it to sell up to 25 million new shares. However, on the Q1 conference call, management said it hasn't made use of that fundraising option yet.

But with $9.3 billion in cash, major hyperscaler contracts, and explosive growth, Nebius could still prove a smart buy in 2026.

Manali Pradhan, CFA has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Monday.com, and Nvidia. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.