Bloom Energy rises 2% after partnership with European AI cloud firm

Bloom Energy’s shares were higher before the opening bell after it unveiled a partnership with Europe’s Nebius, an AI cloud provider seeking to overcome power constraints in the AI infrastructure buildout.

Nebius said Wednesday that it would deploy Bloom’s fuel-cell technology to generate electricity faster and more quickly at its data centers in Europe. Nebius will pay Bloom up to $2.6 billion in service fees during the life of the agreement, subject to conditions, the company said in a SEC filing.

The cloud company plans to buy electricity generated by Bloom’s systems, while Bloom will install and manage the equipment. The project is expected to roll out in three phases over 10-year terms, providing about 250 megawatts of guaranteed power capacity and 328 megawatts of installed capacity, per the filing.

Bloom was last trading 1.6% higher in premarket trading, while the Nasdaq-listed Nebius was up over 7%.

“Power remains a key constraint for AI infrastructure build-outs,” Nebius’ Chief Product and Infrastructure Officer Andrey Korolenko said in the statement. “We chose Bloom because their fuel cells solve that directly: Clean power with virtually no pollutants is deployed onsite, on the timelines our customers need, with the availability AI workloads require.”

“We expect to put this technology to work alongside our infrastructure as we continue to scale our capacity,” he added.

Nebius has secured several partnerships as it emerges as a key AI compute provider in Europe, including a $2 billion investment from Nvidia and a $27 billion infrastructure deal with Meta in March.

It also recently announced plans to build the region’s largest AI data center in Finland, which will have a capacity of 310 MW, and will start supplying customers by 2027.

While several AI compute commitments have been announced in Europe, several challenges are in play, including higher energy prices than in the U.S., as well as projects facing delays connecting to power grids and energy constraints.

— CNBC’s Kai Nicol-Schwarz helped contribute to this story.