As severe energy constraints threaten to throttle the artificial intelligence (AI) boom, Nebius Group NV (NASDAQ:NBIS) has emerged as the premier infrastructure play, securing massive hyperscaler contracts to meet the market’s “insatiable demand” for compute power.
The New AI Bottleneck
Appearing recently on Fox Business, Futurum Group experts Daniel Newman and Shay Boloor ranked top AI infrastructure stocks, placing Nebius firmly at the pinnacle of their Neocloud leaderboard.
The dramatic shift in market focus from chipmakers to foundational energy capacity is driving this momentum. “Energy is the new bottleneck,” Newman explained.
“We keep hearing about chips, but the reality is — power and capacity constraints are what's holding back the next wave of AI scaling. Hyperscalers have insatiable demand for compute, but they literally cannot get enough power or infrastructure online fast enough.”
Nvidia Validation And A Massive Pipeline
To fill this critical capacity gap, tech giants are aggressively turning to Nebius. Boloor highlighted the company’s staggering operational momentum, driven by a newly announced $27 billion contract pipeline and a massive $2 billion strategic investment from Nvidia Corp. (NASDAQ; NVDA).
NBIS also signed a long-term AI infrastructure agreement with Meta Platforms Inc. (NASDAQ:META). The five-year agreement will see Nebius supply dedicated AI compute capacity to Meta across multiple locations.
“That's a huge validation,” Boloor stated, crowning Nebius as the “best pure-play AI cloud utility” in the market. He noted that Nebius is perfectly positioned to fill the gap for hyperscalers who are “desperate for more GPU clusters and AI cloud resources.”
The ‘Industrial’ Utility Wave
This surge aligns directly with Futurum’s earlier projections that the “next wave of the AI trade’s industrial,” which implies these “AI utility” companies form the foundational infrastructure for powering AI, apart from the immediate buzz of AI chipmakers.
Nebius dominates this space by running “some of the most efficient cooling systems in the world” and controlling operations “from hardware design to power sourcing.”
Miners Pivot To AI Compute
The scramble for wattage is also elevating alternative infrastructure plays. Bitcoin miners such as Cipher Digital Inc. (NASDAQ:CIFR) and IREN Ltd. (NASDAQ:IREN) are successfully dual-purposing their existing power contracts and cooling facilities for high-density AI workloads.
IREN, for instance, earns high conviction for its access to the “cheapest renewable power in the world,” costing as low as “three and a half cents per kilowatt an hour.”
“When hyperscalers start treating power as the scarce resource, these infrastructure and power-enabled names win,” Newman concluded.
NBIS Gains Over 55% In 2026
Shares of Nebius Group were up 55.13% year-to-date and 351.65% over the past year.
While NBIS was also higher by 45.2% over the last six months, it closed 14.96% higher on Monday at $129.85 apiece.
Benzinga’s Edge Stock Rankings indicate that NBIS maintains a strong price trend over the short, medium, and long terms, with a poor value score.
Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.
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