TL;DR · 30-second read
The Short Version
The electricity showed up before the computers did. Bloom Energy, which builds fuel cells (machines that turn natural gas into electricity without burning it), says the first slice of power is ready at a huge artificial intelligence data center being built in Vineland, New Jersey.
It took about five months from signing the deal. The building it will feed is not open yet.
The full site is planned to use as much electricity as a mid-sized city. It is part of a deal to supply computing power to Microsoft. The question now is whether the rest of the power, and the building, arrive just as fast.
Bloom Energy (NYSE: BE) has the first fuel-cell power block ready for customer use at Nebius’s (NASDAQ: NBIS) 300-megawatt data center in Vineland, New Jersey. Founder and CEO KR Sridhar said so on the company’s October 22 third-quarter earnings call, Blockspace Media reported. The data center itself is not yet online. Nebius is bringing the site up in phases, and Sridhar said its first block is “almost getting ready.” The two companies signed their agreement on May 14. According to a Nebius filing, the contract covers about 250 MW of guaranteed capacity from about 328 MW of installed fuel cells. It runs across three expected phases with 10-year supply terms, and monthly service fees total up to $2.6 billion.
The same day, Bloom reported record third-quarter revenue of $1,235.8 million, up 138.1% year over year, and raised its full-year 2026 revenue guidance to $4.4–4.6 billion. Nebius separately disclosed a $3.5 billion, 364-day senior secured bridge facility from Citi to fund data center development and GPU procurement.
Executive Summary
Bloom Energy says it has taken on-site power for Nebius’s Vineland AI campus from a signed contract to delivered capacity in about five months. By Sridhar’s account, that was roughly three months to win local planning approval and two more to have the first block ready. The site is tied to Nebius’s multiyear agreement with Microsoft. Bloom’s equipment replaces an earlier plan for 32 natural-gas engines that drew resident objections over emissions.
The significance is the order in which things arrived. For the first phase at Vineland, electricity is no longer the item that decides when AI servers switch on. The data hall is. That reverses the usual story of AI construction, in which buildings wait on power. It also shifts the remaining schedule and financing pressure toward the data hall and GPU side of the project. Nebius is funding that side partly with a 364-day bridge loan.
The claim covers one block. Bloom has not said how large that block is or when the remaining phases follow. Vineland is now a reference project for fuel-cell power at AI scale, and the next two phases are where it gets tested.
Power Arrived First at Vineland
The timeline is unusually specific. Nebius and Bloom signed on May 14. On August 17, Vineland’s Planning Board approved developer DataOne’s 587,980-square-foot Phase 2 expansion. The approval included multiple fuel-cell areas and a tank for liquefied natural gas (LNG), which is gas chilled to a liquid so it can be stored on site. By Bloom’s October 22 earnings call, Sridhar said the first block of power was “ready for customer use.” That is roughly five months from contract to first power for on-site generation at an AI campus.
The building that power will serve is not online yet. Sridhar said Nebius brings the 300-megawatt site up “block by block” and that its first block “is almost getting ready.” He added: “we are already there for the first block.” A megawatt is a million watts, and a site this size draws the electricity of a mid-sized city. In construction terms, the pacing item is whatever sets the date when GPU servers start drawing current. For phase one, that is no longer electricity. It is the data hall itself: the shell, cooling, electrical fit-out, and the delivery and installation of GPU servers. That reverses the usual framing of AI buildout, in which power is the scarce input and the building waits on it.
The claim has limits. “Ready for customer use” is Bloom’s own description, given on its own earnings call, and Bloom has not said how many megawatts the first block holds. One block at one campus is a data point, not an industry trend. Still, the near-term schedule question at Vineland now sits on the data hall side, not Bloom’s. That matters to Nebius, to Microsoft as the customer behind the campus, and to the lenders behind the power plant.
Three Months of Approval, Two Months of Build
Sridhar’s own split of the timeline is revealing. Planning board approval took about three months, and delivering the first block took two more. On his figures, local approval took longer than installation. That matches the risk list in Bloom’s third-quarter investor presentation. It names “air permitting delays which affect the ability to finance the use of Energy Servers” alongside utility interconnection and other installation delays.
Vineland’s history points the same way. The site’s earlier plan called for 32 natural-gas engines, and residents objected over emissions. The fuel-cell design replaced it. Bloom’s units make electricity from natural gas through an electrochemical reaction rather than by burning it. The expansion was then approved in August. That sequence does not prove the technology change caused the approval. It does show that the choice of generator and its local acceptance were tied together, and that the zoning hearing can take longer than the equipment.
Behind-the-meter power means generating electricity at the campus instead of drawing it from the utility grid. For developers weighing it, the practical lesson from Vineland is about where schedule risk sits. The local permit and the fuel plan matter at least as much as the hardware.
Power on a Service Contract, GPUs on a Bridge Loan
Nebius is buying power as a service rather than buying a power plant. Under the contract, it pays monthly fees of up to $2.6 billion over the term, and Bloom installs, operates and maintains the systems. Bloom puts the project investment at $1.7 billion. Industrial Development Funding is the lead developer, and Oaktree Capital Management supplies infrastructure capital. Morgan Stanley structured the tax-equity financing and is its only investor; tax equity is capital from investors who use a project’s tax credits. MUFG Bank led the senior debt. The capital for the generators is long-dated and spread across several firms that specialise in project finance.
Nebius’s own financing for the building and the servers is shorter-dated. A foreign issuer files a 6-K as its current report to US regulators. In one dated October 22, Nebius disclosed a $3.5 billion senior secured bridge facility from Citi. It was signed October 17 and matures October 16, 2027. The interest rate is Term SOFR, a benchmark lending rate, plus 2.75%, rising 0.25% every 90 days to a 3.50% cap. In the accompanying press release, Nebius said proceeds go to “data center development and GPU procurement.” COO Ophir Nave said the company can still draw on “asset-backed financing based on investment-grade customer commitments of more than $40 billion of long-term contracts.”
The facility funds Nebius’s global build-out, not Vineland specifically. Even so, the contrast is clear. At Vineland, the power is funded through multi-party project finance with 10-year supply terms. The data halls and GPUs Nebius is building draw partly on 364-day money with a rising margin. Neither structure is a fault. The point is that, with power ahead for phase one, the campus’s remaining sensitivity to cost and timing sits mostly on Nebius’s side of the ledger.
What Blocks Two and Three Have to Prove
Sridhar’s promise went beyond the first block: “We will not be the bottleneck to them turning on their data center their entire 300 megawatts.” The disclosed contract guarantees about 250 MW from about 328 MW of installed units, and the companies have not reconciled that with the 300-megawatt site figure. The installed capacity exceeds the guaranteed output by roughly 78 MW. The gap between 250 MW and 300 MW could be explained by a grid connection, by a different way of measuring the site, or by that installed headroom.
Bloom has the scale to try. Third-quarter product revenue rose 179.4% to $1,073.6 million. Gross margin reached 33.8%, up 453 basis points (4.53 percentage points). CFO Simon Edwards called the guidance increase the third this year. Bloom’s own risk factors, however, include its ability to expand production capacity, supply constraints, and “the availability of financing for data center developments.” If phases two and three arrive at the pace of the first, Vineland strengthens the case that on-site fuel cells can keep up with AI campus schedules. If they slip, the five-month figure stays a single-block result.
Background
Bloom Energy, based in San Jose, California, makes fuel-cell systems it calls Energy Servers. They generate electricity on site from natural gas without combustion. The company has increasingly sold to hyperscalers, the largest cloud and AI computing operators, and to data center developers who need power faster than local utilities can connect it. Bloom joined the S&P 500 in 2026 and reported record third-quarter results on October 22.
Nebius Group, headquartered in Amsterdam and listed on Nasdaq, is an AI cloud company. It rents GPU computing capacity to developers and enterprises and is expanding its data center footprint worldwide. Its Vineland, New Jersey, campus is being developed by DataOne and is tied to Nebius’s multiyear agreement with Microsoft. As a foreign private issuer, Nebius reports material events to US regulators on Form 6-K. Source: Bloom Energy says first power block is ready at Nebius’s 300 MW New Jersey data center (Blockspace Media): Bloom’s CEO on first fuel-cell power at Nebius’s Vineland AI campus and the contract’s terms. Primary sources: Nebius Group Form 6-K, October 22, 2026 (Citi bridge facility); Nebius secures $3.5 billion financing facility with Citi (Exhibit 99.1); Bloom Energy Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2026; Bloom Energy Form 8-K, October 22, 2026; Bloom Energy Reports Record Third Quarter 2026 Financial Results and Raises Full Year 2026 Guidance (Exhibit 99.1); Bloom Energy Q3 2026 supplemental investor presentation (Exhibit 99.2).Sources