Nebius (Nasdaq: NBIS), the AI cloud company, announced a new business model that lets infrastructure partners deploy Nebius’s full-stack AI cloud platform in their own AI data centers. The model brings additional capacity to Nebius customers, and expands the availability of value-added AI compute globally at a time when demand continues to outstrip supply.

Under the model, partners finance and own the infrastructure and hardware, and operate the data centers. Nebius supplies its systems architecture and supply-chain access; deploys and maintains its hardware design and software and services stack on the partner infrastructure; and takes the resulting capacity to market through its global sales organization.

Partners get fully-owned AI infrastructure assets, designed to Nebius standards, and a fast route to serve the AI cloud market. Nebius’s architecture and platform transform a partner’s raw capacity into a production-ready AI cloud, which Nebius then connects to customers. Because Nebius brings the demand, partners can begin generating a return as soon as the capacity goes live.

For Nebius, this asset-light approach expands the capacity it can offer its customers, such as AI natives and enterprises, with minimal incremental capital requirements. Partners’ data centers will join the Nebius capacity pool, adding incremental capacity to that coming online from Nebius’s owned data centers and colocations.

Arkady Volozh, founder and CEO of Nebius, said:

“Our new asset-light model gives infrastructure partners a flexible way to benefit from the explosive growth of AI. Our software allows partners to reach a much wider customer base with much better margins than conventional wholesale bare-metal contracts. We're inviting data center investors, regional partners and others with capacity or capital to contribute to join us in serving this demand – combining their assets and local strengths with Nebius's technology, platform, operational expertise and customer demand.”

Nebius anticipates pursuing a variety of economic arrangements under this partnership model, including revenue-sharing agreements, licensing fees and commissions, as well as committed capacity arrangements that would provide Nebius with access to additional compute to be sold to customers. The company has already entered into initial arrangements under this asset-light model.

As part of the partnership agreements, Nebius will equip partner teams to run the site and will remain responsible for the cloud software and service levels, while the partner manages the facility and hardware. Customers receive the same standard of service whether they run on Nebius’s own infrastructure or a partner’s.