San Jose, California, May 21, 2026, 08:02 PDT
- Nebius agreed to buy power capacity and electricity from Bloom fuel-cell systems in a deal worth up to $2.6 billion over 10-year supply phases.
- Bloom shares were up about 11.7% in U.S. morning trading; Nebius rose about 16.8%.
- The first project is expected to carry 328 megawatts of installed capacity this year, replacing gas turbines at the site.
Bloom Energy shares jumped on Thursday after Amsterdam-based AI cloud company Nebius disclosed a fuel-cell capacity agreement that could pay the San Jose power company up to $2.6 billion over the life of the contract, making Bloom a fresh focus in the market’s AI-power trade.
The timing matters because power has become a limiting factor for artificial-intelligence data centers. AI training and inference use dense clusters of chips that need large, steady electricity supply, and companies are looking for ways to avoid long waits for new grid connections.
Nebius said Bloom’s systems would provide “behind-the-meter” electricity, meaning power produced on site for the customer rather than first moving through the utility grid. The companies said the modular systems can be commissioned faster than new transmission lines, shortening the time between choosing a site and putting compute capacity to work. Nebius
A filing showed Nebius Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary, signed the master fuel-cell capacity agreement and related system orders with Bloom on May 14. The project is expected to provide about 250 megawatts of guaranteed capacity, backed by about 328 megawatts of installed system capacity, in three phases with 10-year supply terms.
“Power remains a key constraint,” Nebius Chief Product and Infrastructure Officer Andrey Korolenko said in the companies’ announcement. Bloom Chief Commercial Officer Aman Joshi said AI workloads need power infrastructure that matches cloud performance. Business Wire
The deal adds to a rapid change in Bloom’s investor story. The company reported first-quarter revenue of $751.1 million in April, up 130.4% from a year earlier, and raised its full-year 2026 growth guidance midpoint to about 80%. Chief Executive K.R. Sridhar said Bloom was becoming the “go-to choice” for on-site power. Q4 Capital
Bloom also has been pulled deeper into the AI data-center supply chain through Oracle. Reuters reported last month that Bloom would supply Oracle with up to 2.8 gigawatts of fuel-cell capacity, with an initial 1.2 gigawatts contracted and deployment underway.
For Nebius, the power deal sits inside a much bigger expansion plan. Reuters reported in March that the company had closed a $4.34 billion convertible debt raise, after Nvidia agreed to invest $2 billion and after Nebius struck large AI infrastructure supply deals with Microsoft and Meta.
The competitive read is straightforward: Nebius is one of the so-called neocloud firms, alongside CoreWeave, racing to sell AI-focused compute capacity to large technology customers. Reuters has described these firms as cloud providers built mainly for AI workloads rather than broad enterprise software needs.
But the trade carries risk. The Nebius filing says the Bloom agreement is subject to conditions before commencement, and the companies’ announcement flagged technical and operational challenges in large power deployments; valuation is also under pressure, with analyst target data on Bloom sitting below the latest market price despite a broad Buy consensus.
Bloom’s fuel cells generate electricity without combustion, a process the company says lowers emissions and cuts water use versus some conventional power sources. For investors, the bigger question now is less whether AI needs power, and more whether Bloom can install it quickly enough, profitably enough, and at the scale its stock price now assumes.
