Copyright Benzinga
The AI boom isn't just reshaping technology — it's rewriting corporate balance sheets. After another quarter of breakneck growth, Nebius Group NV (NASDAQ:NBIS) signaled that the next phase of its expansion will be powered not by GPUs, but by debt. "We're actively evaluating asset-backed financing, corporate-level debt, and equity financing," CFO Dado Alonso told investors on the third quarter earnings call, adding bluntly that "funding our growth will require raising a significant amount of capital." Track NBIS stock here. That puts Nebius on the same path as Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:META) and Oracle Corp (NYSE:ORCL), two Big Tech giants whose multi-billion-dollar AI buildouts are increasingly financed through bond markets. As AI infrastructure companies scale at five times annual growth, free cash flow isn't enough — credit is becoming the new compute. Read Also: Nebius Vs. Palantir: The AI Infrastructure War At 100x Sales When AI Growth Outgrows Equity Nebius' problem is one most startups dream of: it has sold out of capacity and can't build fast enough. Its plan to reach 2.5 gigawatts of contracted power by 2026 will require billions in upfront spending — the kind that even equity markets can't absorb endlessly. Nvidia Corp (NASDAQ:NVDA), meanwhile, is positioning itself as AI's unofficial banker, having backed more than $100 billion in compute-linked projects from partners like CoreWeave Inc (NASDAQ:CRWV) and OpenAI. It's a self-sustaining ecosystem: chipmakers finance data centers that buy more chips, while investors chase yield in AI-backed debt. The New AI Asset Class According to JPMorgan, AI and data center issuers could make up more than 20% of the global investment-grade bond market by 2030. For now, Nebius is simply the latest to admit what everyone in the sector already knows — the future of AI might be as much about credit spreads as compute speed. In other words, the next AI arms race isn't just about who has the most GPUs; it's about who can borrow best to buy them. Read Next: Amazon’s $150 Billion AI Capex Surge Could Force Its First Big Bond Deal In Years Photo: Shutterstock
