Meta Platforms (META 2.45%) has been pushing the envelope in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), integrating the technology across its advertising and social media offerings, apart from offering consumer-facing AI tools such as chatbots for businesses.
However, the company's AI push comes at a sizable cost. Meta is on track to incur $115 billion to $135 billion in capital expenses this year, an increase of almost 74% over last year's outlay at the midpoint. The company will spend a big chunk of this money purchasing AI accelerator chips from Nvidia (NVDA 1.21%), based on the latest announcement from the two companies.
While Nvidia is set to benefit from Meta's capital spending this year, neocloud infrastructure provider Nebius Group (NBIS 3.45%) is likely to be another winner.
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Meta's AI spending will be a tailwind for Nvidia's cloud partners
Meta says it will purchase "millions of Nvidia Blackwell and Rubin GPUs" this year, in addition to deploying the chip giant's Arm-based Grace server central processing units (CPUs) in large numbers. An important point in Nvidia's press release was that Meta will tap the former's cloud partners to deploy AI chip systems: "Meta will deploy industry-leading NVIDIA GB300-based systems and create a unified architecture that spans on-premises data centers and NVIDIA Cloud Partner deployments to simplify operations while maximizing performance and scalability," the company said.
Nvidia's cloud partners provide full-stack hardware and software solutions powered by the chip giant's chip systems, networking components, and software solutions. Nebius is a part of this program. The neocloud company offers access to various Nvidia GPUs, such as the H200, the H100, and Blackwell systems, by charging hourly rentals based on customers' needs.
NASDAQ: NBIS
Key Data Points
Additionally, customers can run popular AI models for various applications on Nebius' software stack by purchasing tokens, which are the smallest units of data used by AI models to process and generate AI workloads. The good part is that Meta is already a Nebius customer, having awarded the latter a $3 billion contract in November 2025.
This five-year contract will be a key growth driver for Nebius, which also counts Microsoft as a major customer with a five-year contract worth over $19 billion. Now that Meta is on track to significantly boost its capex in 2026 and is probably going to allocate a significant chunk of the same on Nvidia's infrastructure offerings, including through the cloud partner network, Nebius' revenue backlog will likely get better.
Nebius' growth could exceed expectations in 2026
Analysts already anticipate an exponential increase in Nebius' revenue this year. Its top line is forecast to jump to almost $3.4 billion in 2026 from $530 million in 2025. Such an impressive jump isn't out of Nebius' reach, as we have already seen it has an impressive backlog worth over $20 billion from the likes of Meta and Microsoft. This figure could rise further with an increase in data center spending this year.
Moreover, Nebius aims to increase its data center sites to 16 this year, up from seven in 2025. It plans to end 2026 with 800 megawatts (MW) to 1 gigawatt (GW) of active data center power capacity, up from 170 MW at the end of last year. So, this AI stock has enough fuel in the tank to significantly increase its revenue this year, which should ideally pave the way for more upside following a remarkable 140% jump in the past year.
