Nebius lifts the H100 to $4.50 an hour while Burry loads the short
From 1 October the AI-cloud operator raises on-demand rates 17 to 21 percent across chips from the H100 to the B300, its second round since June. Customers are prepaying the buildout, two camps are fighting over the stock, and the risk sits where contracted power has not yet become billed hours.
Vincent Jiang · 3 min read
Scarcity is doing the negotiating
From 1 October, an hour on a 2022-vintage H100 rents for $4.50 on Nebius, up from $3.85, the second round of on-demand increases since 1 June 135. Charging more each quarter for four-year-old silicon is either the strongest demand signal in the AI trade or its last tick, and both camps have money down.
Michael Burry told Substack readers on 22 September he had added to his Nebius short "in some size", citing Chinese memory supply flagged by Acer's chief executive 4. Rothschild & Co Redburn had set an $84 target a day earlier, 62 percent below the stock's Monday open of $223.54 6. BNP Paribas Exane answered with $399 in the same week 7. The referee leans the other way: Nebius's own site carries the banner "Rated Platinum in SemiAnalysis ClusterMAX 3.0", the crown The Inference covered on 24 September alongside Burry's add 8.
The list price is a ceiling
The customer notice, reported 16 September, lifts the whole menu: H200 to $5.40 from $4.50, B200 to $8.50 from $7.15, B300 to $9.50 from $7.85, rises of 17 to 21 percent 13. The public page still carried only the old rates when the news broke; by 27 September it posted both columns, current and "Effective October 1, 2026" 38. Commitment discounts run up to 35 percent below on-demand, so the menu is a ceiling, not an average 38.
Second-quarter revenue was $582.3 million, up 454 percent, at a 41 percent adjusted-EBITDA margin 16. The list is a peak price: spot H100s start at $0.79 an hour, and even with the October rise counted the menu sits near half of AWS rates 58.
When a landlord raises the rent twice inside four months on four-year-old machines, scarcity is doing the negotiating.
Every GPU on Nebius's on-demand menu costs more from 1 October
- Current rate
- From 1 October
Data
| Current rate | From 1 October | Change | |
|---|---|---|---|
| H100 | $3.85/hr | $4.50/hr | +16.9% |
| H200 | $4.50/hr | $5.40/hr | +20.0% |
| B200 | $7.15/hr | $8.50/hr | +18.9% |
| B300 | $7.85/hr | $9.50/hr | +21.0% |
Customers prepay half the build
The tenants are paying for the building before it exists. Roughly 70 percent of deals closed in the second quarter carried prepayments covering 50 to 60 percent of the capex behind them, and management expects over $9 billion of prepayments this year; both figures are company-claimed 2. Management also says it sold out, and could have sold its entire 2027 capacity on the terms struck 2.
5GW contracted, 800MW connected
The bear exhibit is the shape of the build: $20 to 25 billion of 2026 capex against $3.0 to 3.4 billion of guided revenue 12. The power ladder is steeper still, 5 gigawatts contracted by year-end against 800 megawatts to 1 gigawatt connected 2.
Between a connected megawatt and a billed GPU-hour sit commissioning, networking, cluster build-out and customer onboarding, months that leave the connected fleet active only in the first half of 2027 2. No actual connected-megawatt figure is published, so no conversion rate can be computed 2.
Six times more power is contracted than is connected today
Data
| Value | |
|---|---|
| Contracted by year-end | 5 |
| Connected, high end | 1 |
| Connected, low end | 0.8 |
Redburn's case is that credit markets are pricing risks the equity story ignores, on a $250 billion program with about $200 billion still to finance 6. Short interest stands near 19 percent 5.
Nebius plans to spend about seven times its 2026 revenue on capex
- Revenue
- Capex
- Estimate
Data
| Revenue | Capex | |
|---|---|---|
| Q3 2025 | $0.15B | $0.96B |
| Q4 2025 | $0.23B | $2.06B |
| Q1 2026 | $0.4B | $2.47B |
| Q2 2026 | $0.58B | $5.65B |
| FY 2026 (guide) (estimate) | $3.2B ($3.0–3.4B) | $22.5B ($20–25B) |
The number to count is active megawatts
Two readings decide it. The pricing page has already posted its October column; what is left is whether the meter follows on the day 38. By 31 December, run-rate revenue must travel from $3.0 billion, one month of cloud revenue times twelve, toward the guided $7 to 9 billion 12.
Guided revenue is more than double the current run rate
- Estimate
Data
| Value | Range | |
|---|---|---|
| Run-rate revenue today | 3 | — |
| Guided, low end (estimate) | 7 | 7–7 |
| Guided, high end (estimate) | 9 | 9–9 |
Between those dates, the number to count is active megawatts, the one figure Nebius does not yet publish.
| Measure | Figure | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Power contracted by year-end | 5 GW | company-claimed |
| Power connected | 800 MW to 1 GW | company-claimed |
| 2026 capex | $20 to 25bn | company-claimed |
| 2026 revenue guidance | $3.0 to 3.4bn | guided |
| Q2 deals with prepayments | ~70% | company-claimed |
| Prepayment coverage of deal capex | 50 to 60% | company-claimed |
| Prepayments expected this year | over $9bn | company-claimed |
| Connected fleet active | first half of 2027 | management estimate |
How this brief was made
01Gathered & sourced269 channels · 1,488 articles▾
Agents swept 269 channels and ingested 1,488 articles, then de-duplicated and ranked them for signal.
02Verified & cross-validated9 claims · 38 data feeds▾
Every one of 9 load-bearing claims was checked against primary sources, with 38 live data feeds reconciling the figures and charts.
- 1XInvest News, "Nebius Stock Holds Focus as GPU Price Hikes Signal AI Demand Strength", 26 September 2026
- 2BTW Media, "Nebius counts power in gigawatts, revenue arrives in megawatts", 26 September 2026
- 3The Coin Republic, "Nebius Stock Jumps as NVIDIA GPU Rates Rise Up to 21% in October", 17 September 2026
- 424/7 Wall St, "Palantir Gains 2%, Nebius Pulls Back, Micron Barely Budges as Michael Burry Adds to Shorts in All Three", 23 September 2026
- 5Seeking Alpha, "Nebius: October 1 Price Hikes Confirm Short-Term Pricing Power", 21 September 2026
- 6Yahoo Finance (Blockspace), "Rothschild Redburn starts Nebius at Sell with $84 target, implying 62% downside", 22 September 2026
- 7Ad Hoc News (boerse-global.de), "Nebius Stock: A $399 Target, an $84 Warning and the Price Hikes in Between", 25 September 2026
- 8Nebius AI Cloud pricing page, fetched 27 September 2026
- 9Sharadar quarterly fundamentals from Nebius's SEC filings, retrieved 27 September 2026
03Reviewed & edited1 human editor▾
One editor read the draft against the evidence, tuned the framing, and signed off before it shipped.
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