Nebius Group, the Nvidia-backed cloud provider spun out of the former Yandex, said on July 17 that it had raised roughly $775 million in its first senior secured debt facility — and the way it borrowed the money is as notable as the amount.
The structure
The facility is collateralized by already-deployed GPU infrastructure plus contracted cash flows from an investment-grade customer. It matures on October 31, 2030, is priced at SOFR plus 2.50%, and — crucially — covers more than 100% of the capital expenditure needed to deploy the underlying chips, effectively letting Nebius recycle capital as fast as it installs hardware.
Borrowing against silicon
This is the debut of a template the AI build-out increasingly runs on: treating GPUs as financeable, cash-generating assets rather than sunk cost. Lenders get a claim on both the chips and the revenue they produce; operators avoid diluting equity or waiting on profits. Nebius joins a small but growing group — from GPU-backed loans like Upper90's — proving out the model.
The customer book
What makes the debt underwritable is demand. Nebius cited more than $40 billion in additional contracted revenue from customers including Microsoft and Meta — the kind of investment-grade backlog that gives lenders confidence the collateral will keep paying. That backlog, not the hardware alone, is the real security.
The market's verdict
Investors liked it. NBIS shares rose about 8%, reversing a 14% drop the day before as the broader chip complex sold off. The bounce, on a brutal day for semiconductors, suggests the market rewards neoclouds that can fund expansion without leaning on equity markets — even as it worries about the chipmakers upstream. Nebius, which trades in the US after emerging from the breakup of Russia's Yandex, is racing rivals such as CoreWeave to lock in capacity; asset-backed debt, rather than dilutive equity, is how the fastest-growing among them are keeping pace.