Meta Platforms just dropped a number that’s hard to ignore: $115 billion to $135 billion in planned capital expenditure for 2026. That’s a 74% jump at the midpoint compared to last year.
A large portion of that money is heading toward Nvidia GPUs — specifically Blackwell and Rubin chips, plus Arm-based Grace CPUs. Meta confirmed it will deploy these through Nvidia’s cloud partner network.
Nebius is one of those partners.
The neocloud company offers GPU access — including H100, H200, and Blackwell systems — on an hourly rental basis. It also runs a software stack where customers can run AI models using token-based purchases.
Meta isn’t just a potential beneficiary here. It’s already a paying customer. In November 2025, Meta awarded Nebius a $3 billion, five-year contract. That relationship looks set to deepen as Meta ramps up its AI infrastructure buildout.
Nebius also counts Microsoft as a major customer, with a five-year deal worth over $19 billion. Combined, the company’s backlog sits above $20 billion — a number that could climb further as big tech firms keep opening their wallets.
BWS Financial reiterated a Buy rating on NBIS on February 17, 2026, with a price target of $130.
Morgan Stanley maintained a Hold rating on February 13, keeping its target at $126. During Nebius’ Q4 2025 earnings call, analyst Josh Baer pressed management on their software stack and the “attach rate” of software to compute services.
Management’s answer was straightforward: 100% of AI cloud customers use Nebius software, and the attach rate is also 100%. That’s a clean number.
The CFO expressed confidence in reaching a 40% margin goal, saying strong demand in the AI cloud business would offset losses in smaller segments.
Analysts forecast Nebius revenue to jump from $530 million in 2025 to roughly $3.4 billion in 2026. That’s a steep climb, but the backlog suggests it’s not out of reach.
The company plans to expand from 7 data center sites in 2025 to 16 by end of 2026.
On the power side, Nebius is targeting 800 megawatts to 1 gigawatt of active data center capacity by year-end, up from 170 MW at the close of 2025.
NBIS stock has already gained around 140% over the past year, trading at $97.80 as of February 20, 2026, against a 52-week range of $18.31 to $141.10.
The stock’s market cap currently stands at $25 billion.
The post Meta Just Handed Nebius (NBIS) Stock a Huge Catalyst appeared first on CoinCentral.