I thought I would do a recap of what I heard and a few thoughts about the Vineland hearing and process. I didn’t listen to all of it, but I did at the beginning and checked in through the evening to see what was happening, and then in the last hour I listened to the public commenting and the vote.

The one testimony that I thought represented the biggest risk was the engineer that said he had reviewed the plans and didn’t believe the runoff water system was adequate. The board did acknowledge that he was an expert witness, so that rang a couple of alarm bells for me. However, it’s a public hearing, so there wasn’t a deep dive on his concerns, but the Data One engineer did reiterate that the plan was properly done. In the end, the board noted it, but it didn’t matter.

I won’t go into all the silly questions and comments from the public commenting session, but it struck me as to how much factually incorrect information was being spread. Notions like no taxes would be paid for 20 years (false), upset about the landscaping (it’s under construction), water and power use concerns, terrorist attacks, LP gas is dangerous, and my favorite – it’s a Ponzi scheme funded by bitcoin!

But here’s the thing – SustainSJ was not interested in learning anything, or improving the outcome, they were there to stop it. Nothing any official or engineer said was going to make any difference for them. Their entire goal was to stop construction of the Data Center. Impassioned pleas about how the board had a responsibility, and the power, to put a halt to this madness were numerous.

However, one of the board members actually called out Data One and Nebius for being a good corporate citizen. He mentioned that they had worked hard to improve the plan, and doing things like switching from the rather noisy Bergen power system (which was already approved) to Bloom Energy was something that Nebius brought to the table when they didn’t have to. They also worked hard on noise abatement changes, even when they were already in compliance.

He also noted that Nebius could have drilled their own wells and taken the water that way, but that the city water system had plenty of supply, which actually was good revenue for the city. It’s not raising water rates, at all.  

I saw a post on X (and didn’t save it), that cited a study by an outside group that has a history of being negative on data centers, and their response was that they thought the plan was exemplary and should be the model for other data center projects. Whoa. Nebius is definitely the good guy tuna company on the porpoise team (IYKYK).

A few more notes:

One of the board member did say that they could have done a better job of communications over the last couple of years. Not sure if that was lip service or if they really felt that way, but did call it out.

I learned a lot about how this data center water usage compares to other businesses. While 8 million gallons of water (the yearly base case) sounds like a lot, a typical golf course uses 30-100 million gallons of water per year. A medium-size restaurant uses 2 million. Other industries will use a lot more than that, and no one would be complaining if any of those were going in, except it’s a data center.

The noise complaints revolved around the construction, not the operations. I get it, but they are complying with the building codes for hours of work, and other regs, but building stuff happens. Get over it.

One of the funnier moments for me was when a board member said that it wasn’t up to him to decide what was being built, and that owners had the right to do what they wanted with the land as long as it met building codes. Well, that got hoots and exasperation from the peanut gallery. He went on to say, jokingly, that he would have rather have a golf course, but he didn’t have the right to dictate anything like that, and the board’s job was to make sure whatever was being built was compliant. He’s right.

I didn’t think the board would vote no, but I also wasn’t sure they wouldn’t postpone a decision to evaluate legitimate concerns. However, this has dragged on for months, and everyone wanted to bring it to a conclusion.

I’m sure there will be lawsuits (who is funding that?) and other machinations to stop the data center. But, in the end, it’s over. The good guys won.

The vote was taken and it was nearly unanimous - the plan is approved.

TL;DR $927 per share BASE case. Bull is behind paywall.

A lot of people looked at our latest public $NBIS model and thought the numbers were insane.

2030 valuation:

Bear: $458

Base: $1,652

Bull: $3,425

Probability-weighted value: $1,916

Click link for full article.

Another very strong data point for the AI infrastructure buildout just dropped.

$LITE reported revenue of $1.01B, up 109% YoY, and guided next quarter to $1.225B to $1.275B.

Think about that trajectory:

$808M last quarter

$1.01B this quarter

~$1.25B guided next quarter

And this is coming from a company selling the optical infrastructure needed to connect increasingly massive AI clusters.

Even more impressive, Lumentum is guiding non GAAP operating margins to 39.5% to 40.5% next quarter.

The AI infrastructure boom isn’t showing signs of slowing down. It’s accelerating.

For $NBIS, this is exactly what you want to see the night before earnings.

Demand across the AI infrastructure stack remains absolutely enormous.

Now NBIS just needs to show us they can execute into it. 👊

From CK Capital on X

Michael Burry is short $NBIS

Worth understanding who’s on the other side of that trade.

Arkady Volozh started building search technology in 1989, a year before the Soviet Union collapsed. He founded a search software company in 1990 and spent the next several years building electronic search for patents, Russian classical literature, and the Bible.

In 1997, one year before Google existed, he co-founded Yandex. He ran it as CEO for 25 years and built it into the dominant search engine of an entire country, one of the very few places on earth where Google does not win.

He took it public on Nasdaq in 2011 and grew it to roughly $30 billion, expanding into maps, ride hailing, e-commerce, cloud, autonomous vehicles, and machine learning.

Then in 2022 he lost essentially all of it. Sanctioned personally, forced to step down from the company he spent a quarter century building, and in exile. Yandex sold its Russian assets for $5.4 billion.

Most people end their career there. He was 60.

He kept the international AI and cloud business, renamed it Nebius, relisted on Nasdaq in October 2024, and started over from a nearly empty building outside Amsterdam with 200 employees.

Since then.

Nvidia invested and now holds a 9.3% stake. Microsoft signed a deal worth up to $19.4 billion. Meta signed up to $27 billion. Reflection AI added over $1 billion. Revenue grew 684% year over year. Contracted backlog is over $46 billion.

He built a company that beat Google in its home market, lost it to geopolitics, and rebuilt a multi billion dollar AI infrastructure business from scratch in under two years.

That’s the operator Burry is betting against.

Roman (Nebius Co Founder) said during the -40% stock drawdown during the DeepSeek panic they had their best week in sales ever.

Now we get more OpenSource progress (insanely bullish for Nebius - that will host them / offer these models to customers and now offers a much better ROI).

What does the market do? $NBIS down almost 50% from ATH.

Can't make this shit up xD

No doubt in my mind Nebius is currently seeing ridiculous demand and the REAL business is absolutely crushing it RIGHT NOW. Again. Exact same reality to narrative disconnect.

Yaya I get it. Risk off, high beta, inflation, blabla.

At the end of the day Nebius will print money like crazy and the facts are painting a very bullish picture that just keeps getting better every day. Ironically, especially over the last few weeks during the selloff. More data centers than expected. Super fast international expansion. OpenSource CRUSHING it.

I have zero doubt price will catch up to reality again and then all the doubters will magically change their opinions again.

That's how $NBIS goes to $1,000

This is probably the biggest announcement and most important strategic decisions in the company's history.

It will take time until the market understands how huge this is.

Let me try to explain how massive this is:

- Nebius can now add capacity 10x faster

- without ANY dilution

- or capex

- or risk

- with ultra high margins

- globally

- in parallel

- while simultaneously making their offering better for customers

This sounds too good to be true, what's the "trick"?

Nebius has the best team and expertise in the AI Cloud game. This is their way of leveraging that and their NVDIA relationship (and NVDIA owns the supply chain, no matter what anyone says...).

The one ugly side of their business has always been the high capex. I believe the capex is super worth it and will deliver very high ROIC. But this is them creating an alternative world in which they completely crush it WITHOUT a ton of capex and dilution.

There are probably millions of entrepreneurs globally who have good connections to local governments, access to money and want to participate in the AI buildout. But they lack the expertise to deliver the product quality of Nebius and will never match it.

All the ex Bitcoin miners like $IREN are in this camp.

They are now facing the option to combine their strengths and the best of both worlds.

P

Great post from Milk Road AI that lays down some truths about what Meta can and can't do, and where Nebius and CoreWeave fit into the picture.

Nebius and CoreWeave are both down sharply on the Meta news. But really, this isn't the threat to the neoclouds that warrants this knee-jerk reaction.

Look at what Meta actually said - they are selling excess capacity. Strategically, it makes sense to sell capacity they aren't using. Like all compute, demand fluctuates. They need build for those peak demands, and selling the excess capacity makes sense.

Nebius' strategy is to build a complete AI factory platform that supports the entire lifecycle of an AI product. It's not just selling compute. In fact, they have stated that they are no longer looking to sign up hyperscalers, and instead focusing on the Enterprise market, and help scale-ups become successful. That's a very different model.

The goal is to be the platform where customers conceive, build, train, fine-tune, deploy, monitor, and scale AI products as their businesses grow. That's incredibly sticky, and once a customer builds and deploys something successful, that's not an easy switch to another provider.

Another part of Nebius's strategy is having strong margins, which we are already seeing. The commoditization of AI compute is exactly what they are avoiding.

Also, it shouldn't be a shock that some big players would jump in the water. It's not a pool, it's an ocean, and there is room for a lot of different players. There will be others.

Of course, the market likes to respond dramatically, and we are seeing that today. Nothing has changed at Nebius, and they are on the same trajectory as they were. They are not having panicked meetings - in fact, they likely anticipated this development, and know that it doesn't change anything.

I just got back into vinyl. I cleaned and restored my old JVC QL-5 direct drive, added a new AT cartridge, and set it up in my new media room.

I'm curious about something I discovered and I am wondering if anyone else has experienced this.

It's been like 30 years since I listened to any of my records, and I found that many records I bought in the 80s early 90s, which I didn't care for then, I now love. Some of them are in pristine condition, maybe played only once.

It's like I have a treasure trove of dozens of albums that I had no idea were even there. Many are ECM jazz like Gary Burton and Jan Garbarek that are extremely well recorded.

Anyway, I was just excited about this and was curious if anyone else had discovered hidden forgotten gems in their old collections.

I am building a new home theater and can do pretty much what I want to. I'm trying to decide between a traditional 7.1 surround system and a 5.1.2 Atmos.

My plan was 7.1 and I have the speakers and cable. But I'm starting to second guess myself and maybe an Atmos would be better.

Here is what I have:

Marantz NR-1711 AVR

SVS Ultra Evolution Titans for LR

Polk ES-35 Center

4 Polk RC85I in-wall for surrounds and rear surrounds

Am I an idiot for not just doing Atmos?