NEW YORK, July 14, 2026, 14:08 EDT
- Nebius shares dropped 6.7% in afternoon trading on delayed data, putting their slide over the past two sessions at roughly 10.6%.
- Reflection AI placed an order topping $1 billion through 2029. That works out to about $290 million a year if spread evenly, or close to 9% of Nebius’s projected 2026 revenue at the midpoint of its guidance.
- Capital spending in the first quarter came to around 6.3x revenue. A $3.20 billion bump in deferred revenue gave a lift to operating cash flow, which ended positive.
Nebius shares dropped 6.7% in New York Tuesday afternoon, even though Reflection AI agreed to buy over $1 billion in computing capacity. The stock was up almost 3% before the open, flipping the session for about a 10-point swing. Order book scarcity appears to be over.
The shift comes after Nebius jumped 229.9% in the first half of 2026, fueled by big customer signings and fast revenue gains. The stated minimum value of Reflection’s contract, if spread evenly from mid-July through 2029, would be about $290 million a year. That’s under 10% of the midpoint in Nebius’s $3.0 billion to $3.4 billion revenue goal for 2026. The deal is strategic, but it isn’t big enough to move estimates right now.
Reflection is set to get access to systems powered by NVIDIA’s NASDAQ:NVDA GB300 chips. “The need for open models is clear,” CTO and co-founder Ioannis Antonoglou said. He said the added capacity will help train larger models. The parties didn’t share a start date, margins, prepayment structure or take-or-pay obligations. That leaves the headline figure tough to pin down. Reuters
This order is small compared to Nebius’s big headline deals with Microsoft Corp. NASDAQ:MSFT and Meta Platforms Inc. NASDAQ:META, which together could be worth up to $46.4 billion. Reflection’s new agreement, with its $1 billion floor, raises that total by just about 2.2%. The market response has cooled with each new announcement, even with changing market settings.
| Customer | Headline contract value | Reported same-day Nebius reaction |
|---|---|---|
| Microsoft | $17.4 billion; could reach $19.4 billion | +43.3% in the afternoon |
| Meta | $12 billion firm; maximum $27 billion | +15% by afternoon |
| Reflection | Above $1 billion booked through 2029 | −6.7% in afternoon, after an earlier 3% gain in premarket trading |
Nebius brought in $399 million in revenue for the first quarter, while capital spending hit about $2.5 billion. The company’s $2.26 billion in operating cash flow depended on a $3.20 billion jump in deferred revenue. Financing activities added $6.30 billion. The cash coming in hasn’t all been earned as revenue yet.
| First-quarter 2026 measure | Value | Multiple of revenue |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue | $399 million | 1.0 times |
| Capital spending | Roughly $2.50 billion | 6.3 times |
| Increase in deferred revenue | $3.20 billion | 8.0 times |
| Net cash from financing | $6.30 billion | 15.8 times |
Nebius is betting its new software features can boost margins. The Cloud 3.6 update brings the Echo infrastructure agent, more SkyPilot links, enterprise-grade security, and quicker storage—tools meant to keep customers from switching clouds. Still, neither the update nor Tuesday’s report gave any detail on software-only revenue or margins. The numbers for software aren’t out yet.
CoreWeave Inc. NASDAQ:CRWV dropped 4.2% today, while NVIDIA picked up 3.8% and Meta was up 0.7%. That move points to investors cutting back on capital-heavy cloud lessors, not pulling back from AI chips or computing demand. The tape is splitting demand from the underlying economics.
Nebius reported adjusted EBITDA of $129.5 million for the first quarter. Depreciation and amortisation hit $212 million, or 53% of revenue. The company raised its estimated useful life for servers and network gear from four to five years, which dropped quarterly depreciation by $43.1 million and pushed net income up by $41.6 million. Equipment life is a main line issue, not just a footnote.
The drop looks steep if Nebius keeps its utilization rates up and keeps getting big customer advances. The company had $9.3 billion in cash as of March and posted a 45% adjusted EBITDA margin in AI-cloud. CEO Arkady Volozh said compute demand is “vastly exceeding capacity.” But issues like rollout delays, softer prices, customer-credit risks or raising money on tough terms would drag on returns. The market wants to see results.
Investors watching Nebius will want to see GB300 machines get deployed, deferred revenue become recognized sales, and a drop in capital spending compared to revenue. Reflection helps widen Nebius’s client base, but since the contract economics are undisclosed, it’s still unclear what it costs to build out all that capacity. The numbers paint a separate picture.
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