Shares of Nebius (NBIS +14.65%) spiked on Thursday after the data center operator formed a strategic partnership with Bloom Energy (BE +8.93%).
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Joining forces to power the AI revolution
The two companies will work together to bring Bloom's impressive fuel cell technology to Nebius' rapidly expanding artificial intelligence (AI) factories.
Electricity is quickly becoming the key bottleneck of the AI boom. Bloom's solid oxide fuel cell systems can be an efficient energy source with minimal water use and essentially no pollution, as they generate electricity without combustion.
"AI workloads demand power infrastructure that matches the performance of the cloud platforms they run on," Bloom chief commercial officer Aman Joshi said. "Our partnership with AI cloud leader Nebius brings together Bloom's clean fuel cell technology and AI-native infrastructure, and helps deliver a community-friendly, high-performance solution at scale."
NASDAQ: NBIS
Key Data Points
A need for speed
Additionally, fuel-cell systems often face fewer regulatory roadblocks than combustion-based systems, which enables them to be brought online faster. That's a major advantage, as AI data center construction is very much a race.
"Clean power with virtually no pollutants is deployed onsite, on the timelines our customers need, with the availability AI workloads require," Nebius chief infrastructure officer Andrey Korolenko said.
Nebius and Bloom expect their first project, with 328 megawatts (MW) of installed capacity, to begin operations later this year.
