Former Crypto Miner Keel Infrastructure Scales AI Data Centers as Nebius Soars

Nebius Group's more-than-doubling stock performance this year reflects a structural shift in how hyperscalers—large cloud providers—source AI infrastructure, with secured power supply becoming a critical competitive advantage. Meta Platforms' expanded agreement with Nebius in the first quarter signals sustained demand from major tech companies, validating the thesis that AI data center capacity will remain a bottleneck for years.

Keel Infrastructure represents an earlier-stage bet on the same secular trend. The company's pivot from Bitcoin mining to AI infrastructure mirrors a broader industry reallocation of capital toward higher-margin, longer-term hyperscaler contracts. By adopting a colocation model—where it supplies power and real estate while customers bring their own chips—Keel accepts lower contract values than Nebius but gains two strategic advantages: reduced capital strain and flexibility to support the growing ecosystem of custom chips designed specifically for AI inference. This matters because Nvidia GPU dominance, while still significant, is being challenged by purpose-built alternatives that are better suited for inference workloads.

The timeline divergence is important: Nebius is already realizing revenue acceleration from tech giants, while Keel is roughly one year away from that inflection. Keel's 2.2-gigawatt pipeline, with 1.5 gigawatts under evaluation, positions it to grow substantially if it secures the three hyperscaler leases it is targeting by year-end and brings projects like the Scrubgrass site in Pennsylvania (up to 1.3 gigawatts) online. Since data center development typically spans multiple years, near-term wins in lease agreements would signal confidence that Keel can compete for the same customer base as Nebius.