Nebius lands $1bn AI compute deal with US startup Reflection
US artificial intelligence startup Reflection has signed a $1bn computing deal with Amsterdam-based Nebius, highlighting how a European cloud provider is capturing massive value from the global race for AI hardware.
Reflection AI has agreed to a computing contract worth more than $1bn with Nebius, an Amsterdam-based cloud provider. The deal, which runs through 2029, secures the US startup access to Nvidia’s newest GB300 chips. It marks the second major infrastructure grab for Reflection in less than a month.
Last month, Reflection signed a multibillion-dollar agreement with SpaceX for the same class of Nvidia chips, reportedly worth about $150m a month through 2029. The startup, founded in 2024 by former Google DeepMind researchers, builds open-source models as a cheaper and more customisable alternative to closed systems from OpenAI and Anthropic. Reflection is currently valued at about $8bn and has raised close to $2.6bn from investors including Nvidia, Sequoia Capital, and Lightspeed Venture Partners.
Open models drive hardware demand
The aggressive push for computing power reflects a broader shift in the artificial intelligence industry. “The need for open models is clear, and this additional compute capacity will allow Reflection to continue to build and train frontier AI models at scale,” said co-founder and chief technology officer Ioannis Antonoglou. Open models are gaining traction not only because they are cheaper to run, but also because recent pressure from the Trump administration on Anthropic and OpenAI to restrict powerful models highlighted the risks of relying on closed providers.
Across the sector, AI startups are racing to lock down hardware as business adoption outpaces the construction of new data centres. Capacity has become the primary constraint on growth, pushing chip prices steadily higher. The resulting bottleneck is redirecting massive amounts of venture capital toward cloud infrastructure rather than pure software development.
A European infrastructure winner
Nebius, which rents out AI computing capacity rather than building its own models, has become a primary beneficiary of this market dynamic. The company split from Russian internet group Yandex in 2024 and now trades on Nasdaq, with its shares more than doubling this year on the back of the AI spending boom. Nvidia has repeatedly backed the company, participating in an early $700m funding round and a later $2bn investment.
The Reflection agreement adds another high-profile client to a roster that already includes a five-year deal with Meta worth up to $27bn and an earlier contract with Microsoft worth up to $19.4bn. Nebius has also acquired the inference startup Eigen AI to expand its capabilities. The agreement underscores a central irony of the current AI boom: while the models being built on these servers are open, the compute infrastructure powering them is anything but free.
