Nebius spent $5.65 billion on capex against $582 million of revenue, and now wants GPU-backed loans

Nebius▲+5.77% — Nebius, up 5.77 percent today spent $5.65 billion on property, equipment and intangibles in the second quarter against $2.25 billion of operating cash flow and $582 million of revenue ⁸⁶. Those numbers show an Amsterdam-listed AI cloud building capacity at nearly ten times its quarterly revenue, in the same weeks its own chief executive and Elon Musk both said the cheap debt is gone ⁸³.

The debt doors are closing one by one

A neocloud, in the plain sense, is a startup that rents out GPU computing capacity by the hour. On October 26, Nebius CEO Arkady Volozh acknowledged that certain secured financing channels and debt sources had temporarily closed↗ ². On November 2, Musk went further: debt markets have "almost entirely shut off access to money for any company that doesn't have substantial revenue independent of AI data centers," predicting "guppy-level death and consolidation"↗ for the 200-plus neoclouds ³.

The bond market has moved the same way: CoreWeave's▲+4.78% — CoreWeave, up 4.78 percent today 9.625% notes due 2032 fell below 80 cents on the dollar in October, a yield near 15% ³. Lenders still fund one structure cheaply: a DDTL, a delayed-draw term loan, secured by GPUs and the customer contracts behind them. CoreWeave's GPU-secured DDTL priced under 6% in March while its unsecured coupons hit 9.75% by April ³. That is the rung Nebius is now reaching for.

The asset-backed rung

On November 3, chief operating officer Ofir Nave said asset-backed financing remains available and Nebius expects to use it↗; any high-yield bond sale would depend on rates and terms ¹. The collateral looks real: more than $40 billion of long-term customer contracts, including Microsoft▲+1.85% — Microsoft, up 1.85 percent today and Meta▲+2.29% — Meta, up 2.29 percent today, about 70% of second-quarter deals carrying prepayments that covered 50% to 60% of the associated capex, and more than $9 billion of prepayments expected this year ⁶.

The funding stack shows who pays. Since 2024, about $2.7 billion has come from share sales to Nvidia▲+3.14% — Nvidia, up 3.14 percent today and other investors, plus billions in convertible bonds ¹, then a $775 million GPU-secured loan in July ⁶, then a $3.5 billion Citi facility announced October 22↗, a 364-day line priced off SOFR, the benchmark rate US loans use, with a margin that starts at 2.75% and ratchets to 3.50% over time, as this publication reported on October 30 ⁶.

Every extra month the line stays drawn, Nebius pays more to borrow, so the structure charges rent on delay. Shareholders supply the equity when secured debt is rationed.

What the equity has already paid

The market has priced the risk. Nebius is down 38.83% in a month, 50.5% below its June 22 peak of $299.86, trading near $150.71 and below its rising 200-day average of $177.72 ⁴.

Insiders sold 35 times against 6 buys over the past year, including director John Wilson IV's 333-share sale on October 29↗ ⁵. The counterpoint deserves its due: Nebius ended June with $8.04 billion of cash against $10.06 billion of debt, a far better ratio than CoreWeave's $51.6 billion of debt against $5.5 billion of cash ⁶³, and its backlog of contracted demand already exceeds $40 billion ⁶. A backlog, though, is money promised, not money received; the interest bill arrives quarterly.

Third-quarter results land on November 12, before the market opens, and that report is the first print since Volozh conceded some debt channels had closed ². The figure that settles it is customer prepayments: if they and utilization keep covering the build, the asset-backed market stays open and Nave's sequencing holds. If prepayments stall, the equity tap becomes the only tap left, and the past month has shown how hard that tap can close.