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Nebius said that demand for AI compute remains significantly greater than the physical infrastructure available to serve it, with customers already seeking capacity into 2028

In sum – what to know:

Demand outpaces supply – Nebius says customers are already seeking capacity into 2028, with demand exceeding what the company can physically serve.

Capacity expansion broadens –The company is building its own data centers while partnering with infrastructure owners that have plots, power and financing.

Enterprise push grows – Nebius expects enterprise adoption to become the majority of its market opportunity and is using partnerships such as Palantir to expand there.

Nebius said that demand for AI compute remains significantly greater than the physical infrastructure available to serve it, with customers already seeking capacity into 2028 as the company works to expand its data-center footprint.

Speaking at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference, Arkady Volozh, chief executive officer of Nebius, said AI is creating value across areas including coding, security and office work, generating demand for models and, in turn, for the compute and cloud infrastructure required to run them.

He said the physical world cannot expand at the same pace as AI compute demand, creating an imbalance between supply and demand. “Nothing is unlimited in this world, but for now, the demand in all the visible perspective is much higher than anybody can serve. For how long it will go, we were talking about 18 months. Now I think we can easily talk about 24 months, maybe more,” he said.

Volozh said Nebius previously indicated that it could sell all of its 2027 demand if it wanted to, although the company does not pre-sell much of its capacity. Instead, it is building capacity that will be sold later.

The company is now receiving orders for the first and second quarters of 2028, with customers seeking tens of thousands of virtual GPUs and GPUs, Volozh said.

That demand is creating a physical constraint on Nebius’ growth. The company builds its own network of data-center capacity, but Volozh said the limiting factors include how much it can physically build, how quickly it can build, and how much of the construction it can finance.

Nebius is therefore adding an asset-light expansion model based on partnerships with infrastructure companies that already have physical resources.

Under the model, Nebius can provide knowledge about building data centers, its racks, software stack and access to its customer base, while partners provide physical resources and capital.

Volozh said Nebius has a long list of companies interested in deploying through the partnership program, with projects expected to bring capacity online from 2027 and later.

Power is another part of the company’s capacity strategy. Volozh said Nebius works with different types of sites and power sources, including locations where electricity is already available, sites requiring grid connections, and its own generation.

Alongside expanding physical capacity, Nebius is seeking to broaden its customer base beyond AI-native companies and digital natives.

The company announced a partnership with Palantir in which Nebius was named a sovereign partner. Volozh said the arrangement is designed around controlled infrastructure for enterprises using open-weight models and their own data.

Palantir can provide tools to create the model-and-data loop, while Nebius provides the infrastructure stack down through cloud, racks, and data centers.

Marc Boroditsky, chief revenue officer at Nebius, said the partnership could help accelerate the company’s enterprise business and customer diversification.

“We’re confident that we’re going to be able to jointly develop opportunity that goes well beyond the existing market adoption in the enterprise, and actually will accelerate our overall enterprise business and contribute to the customer diversification that we have at Nebius,” said Boroditsky.

Boroditsky said Nebius believes enterprise customers will ultimately represent the majority of the market opportunity. The company is beginning to build traction in areas including physical AI, healthcare and life sciences, media and entertainment, retail, and financial services.