{"id":227078,"date":"2026-01-08T10:35:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-08T10:35:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/227078\/"},"modified":"2026-01-08T10:35:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T10:35:11","slug":"this-under-the-radar-ai-stock-looks-primed-to-skyrocket-in-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/227078\/","title":{"rendered":"This Under-the-Radar AI Stock Looks Primed to Skyrocket in 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The data center specialist has major growth plans for 2026.<\/p>\n<p>There are numerous companies involved in the artificial intelligence (AI) buildout. There are obvious winners like Nvidia (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.fool.com\/quote\/nasdaq\/nvda\/\" class=\"font-bold hover:underline\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">NVDA<\/a> +0.91%), but also an array of smaller players that are making their fortunes by building some of the infrastructure that an AI-first world will require. One of my favorites in this category is Nebius (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.fool.com\/quote\/nasdaq\/nbis\/\" class=\"font-bold hover:underline\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">NBIS<\/a> 4.02%).<\/p>\n<p>Nebius rents out space in data centers and owns some of its own to rent computing power out to AI hyperscalers. This business model is similar to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fool.com\/terms\/c\/cloud-computing\/\" class=\"text-cyan-900 hover:text-cyan-800\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">cloud computing<\/a> businesses that have already achieved huge success, although Nebius is focused on providing hardware specifically designed to support <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fool.com\/terms\/a\/artificial-intelligence\/\" class=\"text-cyan-900 hover:text-cyan-800\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">artificial intelligence<\/a> workloads. This is a genius business model, and I think the stock is primed to skyrocket in 2026.<\/p>\n<p><img alt=\"Worker in a data center.\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"880\" height=\"680\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" class=\"h-auto max-w-full rounded object-contain\" style=\"color:transparent\"   src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1767868510_712_.jpeg\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">Image source: Getty Images.<\/p>\n<p>Nebius expects monster growth in 2026<\/p>\n<p>Netherlands-based Nebius was previously the parent company of Russian tech company Yandex, but it sold off its diversified Russian assets in 2024 in response to the West&#8217;s sanctioning of Russian companies following the invasion of Ukraine. The new Nebius is operating largely as an AI data center business, and is clearly doing just fine.<\/p>\n<p>Now, Nebius specializes in providing training clusters of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fool.com\/terms\/g\/gpu\/\" class=\"text-cyan-900 hover:text-cyan-800\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">graphics processing units (GPUs)<\/a> for its clients. These GPUs are primarily sourced from Nvidia, so its capacity is in high demand. Originally, Nebius had planned to contract for 1 gigawatt of power for 2026. However, it has adjusted in light of high demand, and recently said it intends to contract for 2.5 gigawatts of power. <\/p>\n<p><img alt=\"Nebius Group Stock Quote\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"64\" height=\"64\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" class=\"w-full flex-none object-contain\" style=\"color:transparent\"  src=\"https:\/\/g.foolcdn.com\/image\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fg.foolcdn.com%2Fart%2Fcompanylogos%2Fmark%2FNBIS.png&amp;w=128&amp;op=resize\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Today&#8217;s Change<\/p>\n<p>(-4.02%) $-4.03<\/p>\n<p>Current Price<\/p>\n<p>$96.21<\/p>\n<p>Key Data Points<\/p>\n<p>Market Cap<\/p>\n<p>$24B<\/p>\n<p>Day&#8217;s Range<\/p>\n<p>$95.56 &#8211; $102.35<\/p>\n<p>52wk Range<\/p>\n<p>$18.31 &#8211; $141.10<\/p>\n<p>Volume<\/p>\n<p>21K<\/p>\n<p>Avg Vol<\/p>\n<p>17M<\/p>\n<p>Gross Margin<\/p>\n<p>-1312.43%<\/p>\n<p>All of its anticipated growth should bring serious revenue to its income statement: The company expects its annualized revenue run rate to be $7 billion to $9 billion by the end of 2026. For comparison, as of Q3, its annual run rate was $551 million. That level of growth isn&#8217;t common in any sector of the market, but it&#8217;s what companies catering to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fool.com\/terms\/g\/generative-ai\/\" class=\"text-cyan-900 hover:text-cyan-800\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">generative AI<\/a> world can generate if they&#8217;re in the right place at the right time. Even after the stock tripled in 2025, I think it could have another strong year in 2026. <\/p>\n<p>Nebius may look expensive now, but it won&#8217;t by the end of 2026<\/p>\n<p>Nebius isn&#8217;t profitable right now, as management is prioritizing building out its footprint. As a result, the best valuation metric for the stock is the price-to-sales ratio. Trading at 60 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fool.com\/terms\/p\/price-to-sales-ratio-value-stocks\/\" class=\"text-cyan-900 hover:text-cyan-800\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">times sales<\/a>, Nebius isn&#8217;t cheap. However, the company is projected to produce massive growth throughout 2026, so a forward-looking metric would be a better choice, and on a forward P\/S basis, Nebius&#8217; ratio is just 6.6.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/ycharts.com\/companies\/NBIS\/chart\/\" class=\"text-cyan-900 hover:text-cyan-800\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\"><img alt=\"NBIS PS Ratio Chart\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"720\" height=\"456\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" class=\"h-auto max-w-full rounded object-contain\" style=\"color:transparent;max-width:720px\"   src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/9a8412b25f8d7143000909724ffbff80.png\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\"><a href=\"https:\/\/ycharts.com\/companies\/NBIS\/ps_ratio\" class=\"text-cyan-900 hover:text-cyan-800\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">NBIS PS Ratio<\/a> data by <a href=\"https:\/\/ycharts.com\" class=\"text-cyan-900 hover:text-cyan-800\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">YCharts.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Furthermore, by the end of 2026, Nebius is projecting annualized recurring revenue between $7 billion and $9 billion. If we use the midpoint of that projection, and project that the company could generate a 35% operating margin when fully mature (Amazon Web Services, a similar business, generated a 35% operating margin in Q3), then that would indicate it could generate $2.8 billion in operating profits. If we further reduce that by 30% to account for taxes and other expenses, such as depreciation, that would give Nebius a target profit margin of around 20%, giving it annual profits of nearly $2 billion. <\/p>\n<p>Nebius currently has a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fool.com\/terms\/m\/market-cap\/\" class=\"text-cyan-900 hover:text-cyan-800\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">market cap<\/a> of $23 billion. That means, if all of these projections come true, it&#8217;s trading at around 12 times future earnings. That&#8217;s a dirt-cheap price, and there could be even more growth beyond 2026.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s unlikely that Nebius will actually deliver those profits at the end of 2026, because it will still be investing heavily in growth and expansion, but that also increases the longer-term upside for Nebius stock. All of this could add up to a company that could make incredible returns for shareholders, making it a great stock to scoop up for 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The data center specialist has major growth plans for 2026. There are numerous companies involved in the artificial&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":227079,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[345,343,344,85,46,125],"class_list":{"0":"post-227078","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-il","12":"tag-israel","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227078\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/227079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}