Meta Platforms has awarded Nebius a sizeable contract that's going to supercharge its long-term growth.
Nebius is likely to outperform Wall Street's expectations by aggressively adding new data center capacity, which should help convert its backlog into revenue.
Shares of Nebius Group (NASDAQ: NBIS) shot up 15% on March 16 after it emerged that Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META) awarded a massive contract to the neocloud infrastructure provider.
Nebius stock has already jumped 47% in 2026, and it appears its shares can maintain their terrific bull run for a long time to come. Let's look at the reasons why the latest contract from Meta can supercharge this artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure stock.
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I predicted last month that Nebius could become the beneficiary of Meta's expanded partnership with Nvidia. That prediction now stands true, as Meta is going to purchase $12 billion worth of AI cloud computing capacity from Nebius over five years, powered by Nvidia's latest Vera Rubin processors. Nebius will start deploying this capacity early next year.
What's more, Meta has committed to purchasing an additional $15 billion in data center capacity from Nebius over the same duration. Nebius says that it currently intends to sell this capacity to other customers, with Meta poised to purchase the surplus.
So, the latest Meta contract has virtually guaranteed strong revenue growth for Nebius. It is worth noting that Meta signed a five-year, $3 billion contract with Nebius in December 2025. The latest deal significantly expands on that number. What's more, Nebius bagged a lucrative five-year contract with Microsoft in September last year, valued at up to $19.4 billion.
Assuming Nebius sells $27 billion of AI cloud capacity to Meta from 2027 to 2031, the company's overall revenue backlog for this period is close to $50 billion (including the prior Meta deal and the Microsoft contract). That's a huge number for a company whose 2025 revenue stood at $530 million.
Importantly, Nebius can actually fulfill such large contracts. The company is aggressively expanding data center capacity, estimating that it will have 800 megawatts (MW) to 1 gigawatt (GW) of active data center capacity by the end of 2026. For comparison, Nebius had 170 MW of active data center capacity at the end of 2025.
Even better, Nebius estimates that its contracted data center power capacity could exceed 3 GW by the end of the year. The contracted capacity refers to the amount of electricity Nebius has agreed to purchase from an electric utility to power its data centers.
So, the company has the potential to aggressively scale up capacity to convert its massive backlog into actual revenue, as the funding it receives from its well-heeled customers should enable it to convert contracted capacity into active capacity.
Nebius' growth is poised to accelerate significantly from 2026.

NBIS Revenue Estimates for Current Fiscal Year data by YCharts
However, the Meta contract should ideally help Nebius exceed those expectations. If Nebius sells the minimum $15 billion worth of capacity to Meta for a five-year period starting next year, its annual revenue in 2028 could jump to $18 billion (assuming $15 billion is spread evenly over five years) instead of the $15.2 billion consensus estimate.
Multiplying the projected revenue by the U.S. tech sector's average sales multiple of 7.8 would send its market cap to $140 billion in three years. That's around 4.7 times its current market cap, suggesting that this AI stock could make investors significantly richer.
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Harsh Chauhan has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Meta Platforms, Microsoft, and Nvidia. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.