Nebius Boosts Infrastructure Expansion With 1.2GW AI Factory Approval

Nebius Group N.V. NBIS recently announced that the Independence City Council has approved the Chapter 100 industrial development incentive plan for its proposed AI factory campus in Independence. This will enable it to proceed with the construction of the large-scale AI infrastructure project.

The planned Independence AI factory is expected to support a potential capacity of up to 1.2 gigawatts, making it Nebius’ largest AI facility in the United States to date and a key milestone in the company’s U.S. expansion strategy. Nebius already operates in the Kansas City region and views the new campus as central to its long-term growth in the country.

The 400-acre, multi-building campus is projected to create about 1,200 construction jobs and around 130 permanent high-tech roles once fully operational. The facility will feature a closed-loop cooling system to keep water usage comparable to that of a typical office building, along with built-in noise-reduction technology. It will connect to Independence Power & Light and is structured so that the project will not increase residential electricity rates.

Under the approved agreement, Nebius will make Payments in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) expected to deliver more than $650 million over 20 years to the city, local school districts and other taxing authorities. The company has also outlined community initiatives, including STEM and AI education programs, workforce development support, assistance for first responders and a Community Engagement Panel to maintain ongoing dialogue with residents.

Nebius is aggressively expanding its infrastructure, having secured more than 2 gigawatts of contracted power with plans to surpass 3 gigawatts, and remains on track to deliver 800 megawatts to 1 gigawatt of data center capacity by the end of 2026. For 2026, the company expects revenue of $3 billion to $3.4 billion, with an annualized run-rate revenue target of $7 billion to $9 billion by year-end.

Taking a Look at NBIS’ Competitors

CoreWeave CRWV is expanding large-scale AI infrastructure to meet growing demand for advanced computing workloads. The company ended 2025 with more than 850 megawatts of active power across 43 data centers, adding roughly 260 megawatts in the fourth quarter alone. It also contracted nearly 2 gigawatts of additional power during 2025, bringing total contracted capacity to more than 3.1 gigawatts, most of which is expected to come online by 2027. Management stated that it aims to add more than 5 gigawatts of additional data center capacity by 2030. For 2026, the company expects capital expenditures of $30 billion to $35 billion and plans to double active power capacity to more than 1.7 gigawatts as new AI infrastructure is deployed.

Microsoft Corporation MSFT added nearly 1 gigawatt of total data center capacity in the second quarter of fiscal 2026, reflecting the accelerating pace of infrastructure deployment. Management highlighted that new AI data center designs incorporate two-story layouts and liquid cooling systems to support higher GPU density and improve performance and latency for large-scale training workloads.

The company capitalizes on AI business momentum and Copilot adoption alongside accelerating Azure cloud infrastructure expansion.  For the third quarter of fiscal 2026, the company expects total company revenues between $80.65 billion and $81.75 billion, suggesting growth of 15% to 17%.

NBIS Price Performance, Valuation and Estimates

Shares of Nebius have gained 52.6% in the past six months against the Internet – Software and Services industry’s decline of 13.1%.

In terms of price/book, NBIS’ shares are trading at 5.34X, higher than the Internet Software Services industry’s ratio of 3.47X.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for NBIS’ earnings for 2026 has been revised downward over the past 60 days.

NBIS currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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