Nebius Announces Second Gigawatt-Scale Data Center Campus in Pennsylvania, Targets 1.2GW Capacity
May 14, 2026
Nebius Announces Second Gigawatt-Scale Data Center Campus in Pennsylvania, Targets 1.2GW Capacity
Nebius, the neocloud and AI infrastructure company, has revealed plans to build its second gigawatt-scale data center campus in the United States, this time in Pennsylvania. The announcement was made by CEO Arkady Volozh during the company’s Q1 2026 earnings call, underscoring the accelerating demand for AI compute capacity in North America.
The new campus will have a total capacity of 1.2 gigawatts (GW) once fully built out, positioning it as one of the largest data center developments in the region. Nebius is now targeting 4GW of contracted power by the end of this year, a significant leap from the 2GW it reported at the end of fiscal year 2025. As of the end of Q1 2026, the company had already secured 3.5GW, with owned contracted capacity now accounting for more than 75 percent of its total power portfolio.
Andrey Korolenko, Nebius’ head of infrastructure, told analysts that the Pennsylvania facility is expected to become operational, or “lights up,” by the end of 2027. At that point, between 250MW and 350MW of capacity will be available. “The schedule looks like adding 300MW each year up to 1.2GW,” he added. Specific details about the campus location within Pennsylvania have not yet been disclosed.
The company’s growth trajectory has been remarkable. Revenue for the first quarter of 2026 reached $399 million, a 684 percent increase year-over-year from $50.9 million, and a 75 percent rise from the previous quarter. Volozh noted that demand continues to outpace supply. “Our pipeline generation in the first quarter grew 3.5x over the fourth quarter, and this is a record for us. And the demand is broadening across industries. Today, we typically see several customers competing for every GPU we bring online,” he said. Chief Revenue Officer Marc Boroditsky later specified that the company is “typically seeing four or more customers competing for every GPU we bring online.”
This intense demand has driven GPU pricing upward across both older and newer generations, with Nebius still selling out across all chip types. In response, the company has significantly increased its capital expenditure (capex) expectations for 2026, raising the forecast from $16 billion to $20 billion up to between $20 billion and $25 billion. For context, Nebius’ total capex in 2025 was $5 billion. Korolenko explained that the increase reflects “visibility into 2027” and the need to invest in capacity that will come online early next year. “We have been able to secure sites and power and customer commitments for 2027, and so we are ramping up construction activities accordingly,” he said.
Volozh linked the capex increase directly to customer commitments, including a landmark five-year agreement with Meta valued at up to $27 billion, signed in March 2026. “This increase reflects investments in our 2027 capacity that will come online early next year. We expect these investments to contribute positively to revenue in the first half of 2027, where we already have customer commitments in place. Meta is one such customer. We need to invest to fully realize this,” Volozh stated.
Despite concerns about rising component costs, Korolenko emphasized that the higher capex is not driven by inflation. “In short, the high number reflects confidence in our contracted demand pipeline and our ability to secure the infrastructure that we were against it. It’s not the cost pressure. The impact of the component inflation in our 2026 program was quite material, around low single digits as a percentage of total spend, also because we secured a lot of 2026 back in 2025 at the previous price levels,” he said.
CFO Maria del Dado Alonso noted that for the previously predicted capex range of $16 billion to $20 billion, more than 90 percent is already secured through cash and contractual commitments. The remainder, up to the new high estimate of $25 billion, will be covered by additional financing. Nebius secured $4 billion in debt earlier this year, along with a $2 billion equity investment from Nvidia. Dado Alonso expressed confidence in securing further debt at “attractive terms” due to the company’s contracts with Meta and Microsoft, both of which have strong credit ratings. “In addition, we expect to raise corporate-level debt. We plan to start tapping into these financing options in the near term,” she added.
Operating cash flow for the quarter was $2.3 billion, up from $198 million year-over-year, largely driven by upfront payments from customers. Cash and cash equivalents stood at $9.3 billion at the end of Q1. The company reported an adjusted EBITDA loss of $129.5 million, compared to a loss of $53.7 million a year earlier, while net income from continuing operations was $621.2 million, up from $104.3 million. Full-year guidance calls for an annualized revenue run rate of between $7 billion and $9 billion, group revenue of $3 billion to $3.4 billion, and a group adjusted EBITDA margin of around 40 percent. At the time of writing, Nebius shares were up 15.72 percent.
Source: datacenterdynamics
