Nebius hikes AI cloud prices again as demand for computing power soars

Sept 17 (Reuters) - Cloud provider Nebius said on Thursday it will raise pay-as-you-go prices for leasing selected Nvidia chips from October 1, marking the company's second price hike in three months.

Demand for computing capacity to train and run AI models is surging; rival CoreWeave said earlier in the day that it is signing contracts at higher prices.

Here are some details:

• Rates for selected Nvidia graphics processing units will rise between 17% and 21%.

• On-demand rates for some central processing units, made by AMD and Intel, and memory offerings have also been hiked.

• Prices of some CPU-only instances will rise by 25% and those of memory offerings by about 41%, the company said.

• The Amsterdam-based neocloud firm said that customers reserving large-scale clusters for multiple months can receive commitment discounts.

• Nebius' price increases follow a quarter of rapid growth in its AI cloud business, as the company signed four customer contracts averaging more than $1 billion each.

• Neocloud firms like Nebius rent out high-powered chips and data center infrastructure needed for AI models.

(Reporting by Anand Gopal and Prathik Jayaprakash in Bengaluru; Editing by Sahal Muhammed)