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Nebius shares rose 8-9% after BNP Paribas upgraded the AI cloud group to Outperform with a $399 target, as GPU and CPU price hikes of 17-25% took effect Oct. 1.
- BNP Paribas Exane lifted Nebius to Outperform from Neutral and raised its target to $399 from $260 on Sept. 24.
- On-demand GPU prices rise about 17-21% and select CPU rates about 25% from Oct. 1, the second increase in three months.
- Second-quarter revenue reached $582 million, up 454% from a year earlier.
Lead
Nebius Group (NASDAQ: NBIS) gained roughly 8-9% intraday on Sept. 24 after BNP Paribas Exane (Euronext Paris: BNP) upgraded the stock to Outperform and raised its price target to $399 from $260. The shares had closed at $237.35 the session before. The move placed the Amsterdam-based AI infrastructure provider among the day's strongest performers in a crowded field of ai stocks. A scheduled round of price increases across its on-demand cloud services took effect today.What Did BNP Paribas Change in Its View on Nebius?
BNP Paribas moved to a positive rating, citing a "significantly enhanced outlook" since it initiated coverage in June. The firm raised its target by about 53%, the largest revision in the stock's recent coverage history. The upgrade followed a second-quarter report in which revenue rose 454% to $582.3 million, above the $569.9 million consensus. Annualized run-rate revenue reached $3 billion at the end of June, up 598% year on year, and the core AI segment contributed $575 million, a 514% increase.
Adjusted EBITDA came in at $236 million, compared with a loss of $21 million a year earlier. Nebius reaffirmed full-year guidance for annualized run-rate revenue of $7-9 billion, group revenue of $3.0-3.4 billion and capital expenditure of $20-25 billion. It also lifted its year-end contracted power target to 5 gigawatts from more than 4 gigawatts.
Which Nebius Prices Are Rising on October 1?
Nebius is raising on-demand rates for Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) H100, H200, B200 and B300 GPU instances by roughly 17-21%, while charges for AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) EPYC Genoa CPU instances climb about 25%. Memory-heavy offerings rise about 41%. Customers were notified in mid-September. It is the company's second price increase in three months, a sign that demand for compute continues to outpace available capacity.
The increases apply to on-demand usage, the most flexible and price-sensitive tier of the market. Long-term contracted capacity, which accounts for the bulk of the backlog, is priced separately. The company signed four contracts in the second quarter averaging more than $1 billion each, with prepayments covering 50-60% of related capital spending.
Why Do Price Hikes Matter for Nebius's Margins?
Higher list prices lift revenue per GPU hour without a matching rise in cost, which feeds directly into margin. Nebius's core business posted an adjusted EBITDA margin of 49.7% in the second quarter, against a group target of about 40% for 2026. Management has cited yields of $20-25 million per megawatt on new contracts, the figure that underpins returns on a build-out of this scale.
The pricing power also carries a signal for the wider sector. Cloud operators that sell Nvidia capacity are reporting tight supply, and the willingness to raise prices twice in a quarter indicates customers are absorbing the cost. That supports valuations across ai stocks tied to infrastructure, though it also raises the bar for delivery as capacity comes online.
What Risks Remain for the Stock?
The principal risk is balance-sheet intensity. Second-quarter capital expenditure was about $5.7 billion, driven by GPU purchases and data center expansion, and the full-year plan implies far larger outlays in the second half. Funding that program requires continued access to debt and equity markets, and the shares have been volatile around such financing decisions. The stock gave back part of its upgrade-day gain in the sessions that followed.
Execution on power and site delivery is the second variable. The 5-gigawatt target depends on data center construction schedules and grid connections, both of which have slipped across the industry.
Outlook
The BNP Paribas upgrade and the October price increases reinforce a narrative of constrained AI compute supply and strong pricing for operators with secured power and chips. The next test is the third-quarter report, which will show how much of the price increase reaches revenue and whether capacity additions stay on schedule. Funding costs and delivery timelines will determine whether the current run-rate trajectory holds.
