Nebius, Crusoe: AI Compute Prices Keep Climbing — SkimNews
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- Marc Boroditsky, Nebius's chief revenue officer, said the company is seeing AI computing prices rise more than expected and that bringing its 2027 capacity online would sell out, with a similar dynamic likely in 2028.
- CoreWeave's spike in cost of borrowing and the heavy debt funding its data center buildout triggered investor skepticism that dragged down stocks of Nebius, Iren, and other neoclouds over the past month, per CNBC.
- Boroditsky said Nebius is not in CoreWeave's position because it is "not carrying the kind of debt" CoreWeave is, and pointed to a Tuesday computing capacity auction showing continued upward price mobility per megawatt.
- Crusoe CEO Chase Lochmiller said older Nvidia chips are commanding higher rental prices today than when first deployed, including A100s pricing above 2020-2021 levels and H100s above 2023 levels.
- SpaceX reported AI business revenue jumped ninefold to $7.56 billion, with CFO Bret Johnsen noting pricing is tracking slightly above the high end of the previously cited $30-$50 per watt range.
- CoreWeave, Iren, and Applied Digital each rose in premarket trading Wednesday following the SpaceX disclosure, which Boroditsky said was "confirming what we already know."
Why it matters: The CoreWeave debt scare crushed neocloud valuations, but two of the sector's biggest operators are now pointing to hard pricing data—Nebius's auction results, Crusoe's rising GPU rental rates, and SpaceX's ninefold AI revenue jump to $7.56 billion—as confirmation that compute demand continues to outrun supply. Investors who fled CoreWeave's debt-laden model may be conflating balance-sheet risk with industry-wide demand weakness; the bullish executives argue those are separate questions and the underlying market is tighter than skeptical pricing implies.
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