GPU Cloud Services Trigger Price Surge: Nebius Raises Prices by Another 20%, Computing Power Suppliers Gain Bargaining Power

Nebius announced that it will implement a comprehensive price increase on its GPU cloud services starting October 1, with an average increase of about 20%. Coupled with Nvidia's strong quarterly earnings report, this drove the company's stock to surge nearly 7% after hours, further confirming the market's judgment that the supply and demand dynamics for AI computing power remain tight.

This round of price adjustments covers multiple chip models including H100, H200, B200, and B300, marking Nebius’s second price hike since May this year. The market interprets this as a strong signal that demand for AI computing power remains overheated while supply stays tight. Boosted by this news, Coreweave climbed nearly 4% after hours, and the optical communications sector also generally strengthened, with AAOI and Credo Technology rising nearly 3%, Marvell Technology and Astera Labs gaining over 2%, and Coherent up nearly 2%.

The price hike coincides closely with Nvidia’s impressive earnings guidance, further strengthening market confidence in the continued cycle of AI data center construction and sparking a broad rebound in sentiment across cloud computing and computing power infrastructure stocks. At the same time, data center operators’ bargaining power is rising, the balance of contract terms is starting to shift toward the supply side, and the industry's competitive landscape is quietly changing.

According to screenshots of pricing circulated by users on the X platform, this round of adjustments is notable. The price per GPU hour for H100 is rising from $3.85 to $4.50, an increase of about 16.9%; H200 climbs from $4.50 to $5.40, an increase of 20%; B200 increases from $7.15 to $8.50, about 18.9%; and B300 rises from $7.85 to $9.50, an increase of roughly 21%.

This is already the second price hike from Nebius in just a few months. In May this year, the company announced an average 29% price increase for on-demand capacity and a 51% increase for preemptible capacity. Taking B300 as an example, its price calculated from about $6.10/hour before May, has so far risen by about 56% in total.

In client emails sent in May, Nebius stated that the price increase "reflects the sustained strong demand for high-end GPU computing power. Even with updated pricing, Nebius continues to offer one of the most competitive GPU infrastructure prices on the market." According to Stocktwits reports, as of publication, Nebius has not made a public response to the latest round of price hike rumors.

Subsequently, the company conducted auction tests for the scarce Blackwell computing power, where customers actually paid 15% to 20% higher than the previous peak prices in order to secure access.

The analyst also noted that Nebius management revealed some customers have already booked computing resources for Q1 and Q2 of 2028, with some orders involving tens of thousands of GPUs. The company's current demand visibility now exceeds 24 months, a clear lengthening compared to about 18 months previously.

Notably, this price hike covers both older Hopper architecture GPUs and newer Blackwell series, indicating that market demand is not limited to a specific chip generation, but widely distributed across various types of AI computing power.

Nebius’s recent fundamentals have also supported market sentiment. According to Stocktwits, since landing a major contract with Microsoft last September, the company has continued its rapid expansion by acquiring Staryps, Eigen AI, and Tavily. In March this year, Nebius announced a $27 billion deal with Meta Platforms and received a $2 billion strategic investment from Nvidia.

Nvidia’s quarterly report released Wednesday further confirms the sustained strong upstream demand, reinforcing the market logic that the AI data center construction boom from Big Tech will continue driving demand along the computing supply chain.

So far this year, Nebius’s stock price has risen about 150%, making it one of the top performers among AI-related stocks. According to Stocktwits data, discussion volume related to NBIS surged over 120% in the past 30 days, with followers up by 7.3%. As of Thursday morning, retail sentiment remains "bullish" and news volume is at "elevated" levels.

The supply-demand imbalance reflected by Nebius’s price hike is reshaping the contract negotiation landscape across the entire data center industry.

Previously, large cloud providers held the dominant position in negotiations, often imposing extremely strict requirements: each server rack had to operate nearly 100% of the time, and the data center's temperature and humidity were held to very tight standards. One data center executive revealed that he has seen contract terms like this: if a single rack goes offline due to a power outage, overheating, or switch malfunction, the cloud provider could cancel six months of rent. If the service-level agreement (SLA) was sufficiently breached, the provider could even terminate the lease outright.

The executive noted that negotiating the SLA essentially means trading off "best price" and "contract durability"—the stricter the terms, the higher the price, but also the higher the risk. "If you can negotiate lighter penalties in the SLA, it’s worth taking a slightly lower price."

However, as operators’ bargaining power increases, these extreme terms are being gradually softened. Payment terms are also showing signs of turning. One credit executive was quoted as saying he saw this kind of case: a customer rented only a small portion of a large data center, but the contract stipulated that if the customer failed to pay on time, they would owe rent for the entire facility for a period. The owner of the data center admitted frankly, "He said, 'Listen, we know this is outrageous... but we can do it.'"

As cloud giants such as Microsoft are eager to have Nvidia server racks put into operation as soon as possible, data center operators like CoreWeave are seeing their bargaining chips increase, and the supply side’s leverage in contract talks is steadily rising.