Nebius Raises AI Compute Prices on Oct. 1, Signaling Persistent Supply Constraints

Key Points

• Nebius will increase on‑demand hourly rates for four Nvidia GPU models by 17% to 21% on Oct. 1.

• Management indicates it could sell all of its 2027 capacity immediately under current contract terms.

• The company projects capital expenditures of $20 billion to $25 billion for the year.

Nebius Group (NASDAQ:NBIS) is about to charge more for the computing power it rents out by the hour. On Thursday, Oct. 1, the AI cloud provider’s on‑demand rate for an Nvidia B300 graphics processing unit will rise 21%, from $7.85 per hour to $9.50.

Nebius expects to spend $20 billion to $25 billion on capital expenditures this year, versus guided revenue of $3 billion to $3.4 billion. Rapid capacity expansion typically drives a need to fill utilization rather than raise prices.

The price increase reflects how tight AI computing supply remains. Although the higher rates affect a relatively small portion of Nebius’s total business, they underscore the constraints on available capacity.

Image source: Getty Images.

Even older chips cost more

The Oct. 1 increase isn’t the first this year. In early May, Nebius’s pricing page listed the older H100 chip at $2.95 per hour and the B300 at $6.10. After the latest adjustment, those chips will cost $4.50 and $9.50 respectively—roughly a 53% and 56% jump in five months. The latest price round covers four Nvidia GPUs (H100, H200, B200, B300) and Nebius’s CPU‑only servers. The notable rise in legacy hardware such as the H100, a generation behind Nvidia’s Blackwell line (B200 and B300), suggests that supply pressures extend beyond the newest components. Nebius reported a more than 30% increase in pricing for older‑generation GPUs between Q1 and Q2.

Nebius is selling what it builds

“We sold out of capacity because, as fast as we bring capacity online, we can sell it,” CFO Dado Alonso said during the company’s second‑quarter earnings call in August. CEO Arkady Volozh reinforced this view in the shareholder letter, stating that Nebius could sell all of its 2027 capacity today under current contract terms. The company is reserving some capacity for customers with immediate needs. Its inaugural capacity auction achieved the highest price ever seen for Nvidia’s Blackwell chips, topping prior rates by about 15%. A recent partnership with Palantir Technologies, which named Nebius its preferred sovereign AI infrastructure partner on Sept. 8, also emphasizes accelerating capacity deployment. In summary, the rate hike indicates that supply cannot keep pace with demand.

What does it do to revenue per megawatt?

Revenue impact is muted compared with the headline rates because Nebius sells both on‑demand compute and reserved‑capacity contracts, and it does not disclose the split. At the end of June, Nebius held roughly $37.5 billion in remaining performance obligations, more than 60 times its Q2 revenue of $582 million. Since contracts are priced at signing, the Oct. 1 increase does not retroactively affect those deals. The rise is more meaningful as a benchmark for unsold capacity. Annual contract value per megawatt climbed from a 2026 base of about $12 million to over $20 million on deals closed in Q2. Management expects short‑term agreements to reach $40 million–$50 million per megawatt and has already secured the first such arrangement in Q3. Adjusted EBITDA margins have roughly doubled, reaching about 45% in Q1 2025 and widening to around 50% in Q2. Capital behind Q2 deals now pays back in roughly 1 year and 10 months, down from 2–3 years previously, reducing reliance on external financing. Shortage pricing can reverse; if supply catches up while construction continues, hourly rates could fall as quickly as they rose. The expansion is financed by $5.75 billion in convertible notes sold in August and about $2.8 billion in new shares issued through June. Ultimately, the Oct. 1 hike underscores current supply tightness, serving more as an indicator than a primary driver of revenue.

With shares around $243 as of this writing, Nebius is valued at over $65 billion, or more than 20 times sales at the midpoint of management’s 2026 revenue guidance. The market price appears to assume that current pricing will persist into 2027.

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