What is the scope of the Nebius-AIB deal?

Nebius has leased 50MW of data center capacity from AIB Data Centers at a facility identified by industry sources as CLT1 in South Carolina. The agreement carries a 12-year initial term, with two five-year renewal options available to Nebius. The deal ranks among the larger single-tenant AI infrastructure commitments tied to a pre-powered US site this quarter.

What are the deployment milestones?

AIB is building two dedicated data halls for Nebius at the campus. The first hall is scheduled for delivery within 10 months of contract execution; the second follows within 14 months. The facility runs on a pre-existing 65MW electric service agreement, a factor AIB and Nebius both flagged as decisive for the timeline. That power headroom leaves roughly 15MW of slack at the site for future tenants or expansions.

How will the project be financed?

Nebius will issue prepayments to AIB under the contract. Those funds, paired with project-level debt and equity, will cover the data center development costs. Neither party disclosed the contract's headline value or the prepayment amount. The use of prepayments signals the neocloud is underwriting development risk directly, a structure that has grown more common as power-constrained developers seek committed capital.

What did the executives say?

"Signing Nebius represents a transformational milestone for AIB," said Jerry Tang, CEO of AIB Data Centers. "Our strategy is straightforward: secure power in attractive markets and convert that power into long-term contracted revenue with leading AI infrastructure companies. This agreement validates that strategy. We believe we have a capital-efficient path to develop the initial capacity. Our focus now turns to execution and delivering on schedule."

Andrey Korolenko, chief product and infrastructure officer at Nebius, framed the choice as a power-availability decision. "Time-to-power is the binding constraint on AI infrastructure today, and AIB's existing power position gave us a clear path to bringing this capacity online on a timeline that works for our customers," he said. He added: "This agreement adds dedicated capacity in the southeastern United States for training and inference workloads."

Where does AIB stand in its broader pipeline?

Earlier this month, AIB acquired two adjacent parcels totaling 29.4 acres in Texas, adding 55MW of capacity to its portfolio. Of that figure, 15MW is already energized. In April 2026, AIB — previously known as BlockchAIn Digital Infrastructure — outlined a US development pipeline of roughly 715MW spanning South Carolina, Minnesota, and Texas.

AIB currently operates a 40MW data center in South Carolina, where 20MW of capacity is set to transition from prior workloads to AI. A separate 100MW site in Florence County, South Carolina, is scheduled to come online in Q2 2028 for AI GPU hosting. The Nebius lease will sit alongside those assets rather than replace them.

What does the deal change for Nebius?

The agreement gives Nebius dedicated capacity in the southeastern US for both training and inference workloads and locks down a pre-powered site before competing neoclouds can claim it. For AIB, the contract converts an idle 65MW service agreement into contracted revenue and validates the company's pivot from its blockchain-era origins under the BlockchAIn Digital Infrastructure brand into AI infrastructure.