Shares of NVIDIA (NVDA)-backed Nebius (NBIS) gained on Wednesday morning after the AI cloud company said it will start letting outside partners build and own the data centers that run its software. The move gives Nebius room to grow its footprint without spending its own capital on steel, land, and power.

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NBIS stock rose more than 3% in morning trade. On Stocktwits, retail sentiment around the company remained in ‘neutral’ territory over the past day, but chatter rose to ‘high’ from ‘low’ levels.

Under the new model, Nebius will no longer finance and own every data center itself. Instead, the company is inviting third-party partners to build and own the physical facilities. Nebius said it will supply the system architecture, the hardware design, the software stack, and even the customers.

CEO Arkady Volozh framed it as a way to keep up with demand that’s outrunning supply across the industry. “Our software allows partners to reach a much wider customer base with much better margins than conventional wholesale bare-metal contracts,” he said in a statement.

Nebius said it has already signed some initial deals under the new structure. The company expects a mix of revenue-sharing agreements, licensing fees, commissions, and committed-capacity contracts to come out of it.

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Its pitch to partners is credible mainly because of two large contracts already on its books. Nebius has a five-year deal worth up to $19.4 billion with Microsoft, giving the tech giant dedicated GPU capacity, which includes more than 100,000 Nvidia GB300 chips.

It also signed a $3 billion contract with Meta for five years in December. The contract was later expanded to $27 billion in total commitments, including $12 billion of dedicated capacity. Meanwhile, NVDA’s stock edged 0.4% higher in morning trade, and retail sentiment fell to ‘bullish’ from ‘extremely bullish’ over the past day.

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