Where Will Nebius Be in 1 Year? The Crypto Cloud Platform’s Make-or-Break Moment
Nebius stands at a critical inflection point—cloud infrastructure's next battleground just went decentralized.
The AI Compute Gold Rush
Demand for GPU resources explodes as artificial intelligence workloads double every three months. Traditional cloud providers struggle with capacity constraints and centralized bottlenecks. Nebius positions itself as the decentralized alternative—faster, cheaper, more resilient.
Regulatory Thunderclouds Gather
SEC scrutiny intensifies across crypto-native infrastructure plays. Compliance becomes the new moat—or the fatal flaw. Projects without proper licensing face existential threats in key markets like the US and EU.
The Enterprise Adoption Tipping Point
Fortune 500 companies quietly test decentralized cloud solutions behind corporate firewalls. The cost savings prove irresistible—30-50% cheaper than AWS for comparable GPU workloads. But enterprise sales cycles move at glacial pace.
Tokenomics Under Microscope
Venture capital flooded cloud crypto projects during the last bull run. Now investors demand real revenue, not just network growth metrics. The burn rate versus runway calculation keeps founders awake at night.
One year from now, Nebius either becomes the AWS for Web3 or just another casualty in the brutal infrastructure wars—because in crypto, even the most promising tech can get rekt by traders who think 'cloud' just means storing their moonbag fantasies.
Image source: Getty Images.
Why the neocloud is growing so fast
The so-called hyperscalers -- the big cloud computing companies like,, and, along with-- are expected to spend roughly $300 billion on capital expenditures, with much of that going to data centers to meet demand for AI computing power.
Nebius and CoreWeave are much smaller than the hyperscalers, so by dollar value, they are growing more slowly. Still, demand for AI cloud servers is so strong that it is propelling these companies' revenue up triple digits, and prompting Microsoft to commit $17.4 billion to Nebius.
As long as AI demand remains strong, we're likely to see outsized growth from Nebius and CoreWeave continue this year.
But it's a risky model
The neocloud companies need to spend on capex to build data centers and fill them with GPUs. In order to fund that spending, it has to take on debt.
Nebius had $1 billion in debt at the end of the second quarter against $1.7 billion in cash, and it will need to borrow more money to fund its expansion and to make up for losses. Because of that business model, Nebius is also losing a lot of money. The company reported an operating loss of $111.2 million in the second quarter, more than it brought in for revenue.
By comparison, the larger CoreWeave now has $11 billion in debt and is on track to pay more than $1 billion in interest expense this year, though Nebius may be on a better trajectory.
What Nebius will look like in a year
More than most AI stocks, Nebius and CoreWeave seem like avatars for the broader AI boom. Their performance is likely to track with broader interest and demand for AI computing power.
Based on the recent momentum, there looks to be plenty of runway left in the AI boom, meaning there's a good chance Nebius will be higher in a year, and it could be significantly higher if it can secure more deals like the one with Microsoft.
However, Nebius remains a high-risk stock, and it's likely to take a dive if the AI narrative wanes. There are a number of reasons that could happen, whether it's economic weakness, a slowdown in AI capex spending, disappointing software sales, or disillusionment with AI products.
For now, the momentum is on Nebius' side, but the stock fell more than 50% earlier this year, one sign of how quickly the narrative can change. There's a wide range of potential outcomes for Nebius over the next year, but based on the level of demand it's seeing, it should find success.
