Arkady Volozh scored the deal of his career on March 16. Meta Platforms agreed to pump up to $27 billion into Nebius over five years. The Amsterdam based neocloud suddenly finds itself holding one of the largest AI infrastructure contracts in tech history. $12 billion is locked in. Another $15 billion waits if Meta exercises options. Delivery starts early 2027.

The numbers stagger. Nebius stock exploded 18% in premarket trading on Monday. This comes just days after NVIDIA poured $2 billion into the company for an 8.3% stake. Now Meta doubles down. The infrastructure will run on NVIDIA Vera Rubin platforms. First large scale deployment. Volozh called it an acceleration of his core AI cloud business. Zuckerberg clearly agrees.

27 Billion Reasons to Ignore Layoffs

Mark Zuckerberg is firing 20% of his workforce. Reuters reported the layoffs just hours before this deal dropped. Yet here he is writing checks that dwarf most national budgets. The $27 billion commitment adds to Meta's $135 billion total AI infrastructure spending planned for 2026. Chump change for a company betting its future on artificial general intelligence.

The structure reveals Meta's desperation for capacity. $12 billion buys dedicated infrastructure across multiple locations. The remaining $15 billion acts as insurance. Nebius will try to sell that capacity to third parties first. If nobody bites, Meta swallows it. Either way, Volozh wins. This follows a $3 billion deal between the same players from November 2025 and a $17.4 billion Microsoft contract Nebius signed in September.

NVIDIA Vera Rubin Arrives Early 2027

The hardware matters. Vera Rubin represents NVIDIA's next generation platform. Nebius gets first dibs on large scale deployment. Meta gets priority access to chips that will train tomorrow's models. Everyone else waits in line.

Nebius operates 16 global data center sites by year end. They target 3 gigawatts of power capacity. The Meta contract guarantees utilization even before construction finishes. This is how neoclouds beat hyperscalers. While Amazon and Google build for everyone, Nebius builds for Meta. Specific. Efficient. Expensive. The $27 billion question remains whether Volozh can deliver before the 2026 World Cup floods Mexico with betting ads and AI inference demands explode.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/technology/nebius-signs-ai-capacity-deal-with-meta-2026-03-16/