Nebius Lands $3.5 Billion Citi Facility for AI Data Center Push

Nebius Group has secured a $3.5 billion senior secured financing facility from Citi to bankroll its AI data center and GPU expansion. The 364-day facility will fund data center development, GPU procurement, and general corporate purposes as the Amsterdam-based company builds out capacity for its AI cloud platform.

The pricing is straightforward: the facility initially bears interest at Term SOFR plus 2.75% per year, with the spread stepping up to a maximum of 3.50%, subject to additional adjustments. Citi acted as mandated lead arranger, agent, and security agent on the deal.

For a company whose growth depends on buying expensive hardware fast, a one-year bridge of this size is a deliberate choice. Nebius said the facility is part of a broader strategy to diversify and sequence its capital sources while keeping flexibility over when and how it raises longer-term financing.

What does the financing change for Nebius?

It buys time without locking the company into expensive long-term debt today. Nebius's funding base already includes customer prepayments, operating cash flows, and other financing mechanisms. Adding the Citi facility supports near-term expansion while preserving access to other capital sources for growth in 2027 and beyond.

The sequencing logic matters for practitioners watching AI infrastructure financing. Rather than issuing permanent capital now, Nebius matches each funding instrument to a specific stage of its build-out — and keeps the option to refinance when conditions suit it.

The next instrument may already be in view. Nebius said it's evaluating asset-backed financing supported by long-term customer commitments. The company currently holds more than $40 billion of investment-grade customer commitments under long-term contracts, a pool that could serve as collateral as its infrastructure requirements grow.

What did the company say?

Chief Operating Officer Ophir Nave laid out the reasoning in the announcement:

"We continue to execute our funding strategy as planned, and are pleased to have secured this financing from a leading global financial institution. This is a result of our disciplined approach to managing our balance sheet to fund our portfolio of projects, and once again demonstrates our ability to choose when and how we raise capital to support our growth."

On the sequencing point, Nave added:

"Sequencing our financing is how we optimize our long-term cost of capital. This facility provides additional financing to support our near-term capacity build-out. We still have a range of capital sources available to us to finance the next phase of growth, including asset-backed financing based on investment-grade customer commitments of more than $40 billion of long-term contracts."

Why the money is needed

Nebius is building a full-stack AI cloud platform aimed at developers and enterprises working across model training, data infrastructure, production deployment, AI agents, and other AI services. The company has been expanding its global data center and compute footprint to meet rising demand for GPU capacity.

The Citi facility gives Nebius more financial headroom as it keeps investing in hardware, capacity, and supporting infrastructure. Nebius framed the deal as consistent with its stated approach: maintain a disciplined balance sheet while matching different funding sources to specific stages of its growth plans.

For anyone tracking how AI infrastructure gets financed, the structure is the signal — a short-dated bank facility now, asset-backed instruments later, all anchored by contracted customer revenue.