Two companies most investors had never heard of 18 months ago landed a combined US$30 billion-plus in contracts from Magnificent Seven heavyweights in a single week - and NVIDIA is bankrolling the lot.
Amsterdam-based Nebius Group (NASDAQ: NBIS) and London-headquartered Nscale released a string of announcements at NVIDIA's GTC 2026 conference as the world's largest tech companies increasingly turn to third-party providers to source AI compute.
Nebius signed a five-year infrastructure supply agreement with Meta worth up to $27 billion - comprising $12 billion in dedicated capacity and a further $15 billion in additional compute across upcoming clusters.
The deal is built around one of the first large-scale deployments of NVIDIA's next-generation Vera Rubin platform, with delivery starting early 2027.
Days earlier, NVIDIA itself invested $2 billion in Nebius as part of a strategic partnership to develop AI data centres, a deal that will help the Dutch firm deploy more than five gigawatts of NVIDIA systems by the end of 2030.
NBIS shares surged roughly 15% in Monday pre-market trading on the Meta news alone.
The stock has nearly quadrupled over the past 12 months and now commands a market capitalisation north of $32 billion - for a company that split off from Russian internet giant Yandex in 2024.
Nscale, meanwhile, unveiled its own trio of deals.
The UK-based firm signed a letter of intent with Microsoft to provide 1.35 gigawatts of AI compute capacity at a new flagship campus in West Virginia, powered by NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72 GPUs.
To secure the site, Nscale acquired American Intelligence & Power Corporation and its Monarch Compute Campus - a 2,250-acre property in Mason County with a state-certified AI microgrid scalable to more than eight gigawatts.
Separately, Nscale announced it will be among the first providers globally to deploy the NVIDIA Vera Rubin platform, bringing more than 100,000 GPUs to Europe in 2027.
All of this comes a week after Nscale closed a $2 billion Series C at a $14.6 billion valuation - the largest Series C in European history - backed by Aker ASA, 8090 Industries, NVIDIA, Citadel, Dell, Jane Street and Point72.
Outsourcing hyperscaling
Meta has flagged AI-related capital expenditure of between $115 billion and $135 billion this year, yet is signing multi-billion-dollar capacity agreements with companies that barely existed two years ago. Microsoft is doing the same.
Fellow Mag 7 trillionnaire NVIDIA is the common thread here - investing directly, supplying the silicon, and financing the build-out of a parallel cloud industry.
A Meta spokesperson said diversifying its partnerships and technology stack was part of building more resilient and flexible infrastructure.
The neoclouds - Nebius, Nscale, CoreWeave and their peers - have emerged because demand for AI compute has outstripped what the traditional Big Three cloud providers can deliver on their own timelines.
Hyperscalers are collectively expected to spend roughly $650 billion in 2026 on data centres and related infrastructure.
NVIDIA's circular flywheel
The circular nature of the arrangement has drawn scrutiny: NVIDIA invests in companies that buy NVIDIA chips.
The chipmaker put $2 billion into CoreWeave in January, $30 billion into OpenAI, and participated in Nscale's $2 billion raise - all bulk purchasers of NVIDIA hardware.
Critics argue that circular investments such as these are fuelling an AI bubble.
However, defenders point to the scale of committed spending from Meta and Microsoft as evidence of genuine end-user demand underpinning the model.
Nebius reported $534 million in 2025 revenue and has guided for $3 billion to $3.4 billion in 2026, with analysts projecting that figure could approach $9.4 billion by 2027.
Nscale has raised more than $4.5 billion in total equity in under 18 months and is eyeing a potential U.S. listing as early as this year.
NBIS shares jumped roughly 15.5% in Monday trading to above $130 per share, adding to a run that has seen the stock nearly quadruple over the past 12 months, with NVIDIA's $2 billion investment the previous week having already triggered a 16% single-session gain
Nscale remains privately held. Its $2 billion Series C, a week earlier, valued the company at $14.6 billion - more than quadruple the $3.1 billion valuation it achieved at its Series B six months prior.
Its CEO, Josh Payne, has flagged a potential U.S. listing as early as this year.
Trepidation?
The sheer scale of work ahead is jaw-dropping. Both companies must build gigawatt-scale data centres, secure power, deploy hardware that does not yet exist, and deliver on contracts measured in the tens of billions - all while burning cash.
Morningstar says Nebius faces a multi-billion-dollar cash-flow churn period that will require significant further equity and debt raises.
The same questions recently asked about Oracle's trajectory are surfacing once again: will AI compute demand continues to grow at the pace that justifies these commitments, or is the industry building capacity for a future that arrives more slowly than the contracts assume?
