NEW YORK, January 2, 2026, 04:52 ET — Premarket
- Nebius Group shares fell 1.7% in premarket trading, lagging a firmer broader tape.
- Investors are weighing AI-linked risk appetite as U.S. equity futures climbed to start the year. 1
- Focus remains on delivery timelines tied to Nebius’ large contracted GPU buildout and funding needs. 2
Nebius Group N.V. shares were down about 1.7% at $83.71 in premarket trading on Friday, compared with a prior close near $85.15.
The early move comes as traders return from the New Year holiday with a fresh set of macro cross-currents, and with the market’s “AI trade” still a key driver of risk-taking. 1
That matters for Nebius because the company is tied to the AI infrastructure buildout — capital-intensive work that tends to trade on confidence in demand, financing conditions and delivery execution. 2
Broader sentiment looked supportive early Friday, with S&P 500 futures up 0.6% and Nasdaq futures up 1%, Reuters reported. 1
Still, investors have been warned to expect turbulence around the same theme that powered last year’s rally. “Bouts of volatility… around AI… are likely to remain,” Nuveen CIO Saira Malik said. 1
Nebius markets itself as an AI cloud and infrastructure provider that builds and runs large computing clusters. A “GPU,” or graphics processing unit, is the specialized chip widely used to train and run AI models.
A key operational marker is the company’s commercial agreement with Meta Platforms that calls for Nebius to provide access to two dedicated GPU infrastructure clusters over a five-year term, a filing showed. 2
Those GPU services were scheduled to be deployed in two tranches during December 2025 and February 2026, with the order carrying an approximate contract value of $2.9 billion, the filing said. 2
The same filing also flagged execution risk: if Nebius misses agreed delivery dates after a grace period, Meta can terminate the first tranche; after the first tranche is live, Meta can terminate the second tranche if delivery slips. 2
Nebius has also pointed to big-tech demand beyond Meta. It said in September it had struck a multi-year agreement to deliver dedicated capacity to Microsoft from a new data center in Vineland, New Jersey, starting later that year. 3
Analyst targets circulating into the new year have stayed bullish. Northland Securities’ Nehal Chokshi has a $211 price target and Citizens JMP’s Gregory P. Miller has a $175 target, TipRanks reported; it put the average target at $164.20. 4
Bulls and bears also keep coming back to the financing question. Nebius said alongside its third-quarter results that it planned to put in place an at-the-market equity program for up to 25 million Class A shares — a mechanism that lets a company sell stock into the market over time — and that it would evaluate it based on capital needs. 5
