You probably haven’t spent much time thinking about Vineland, New Jersey, lately. It’s a quiet spot, known more for its agricultural roots and glass-making history than for being the "brain" of the global AI revolution. But that’s changing fast. Right now, a massive industrial site near South Lincoln and Sheridan avenues is being transformed into a 2.6 million-square-foot behemoth. This is the Nebius Group AI data center Vineland project, and honestly, it’s one of the most ambitious infrastructure plays in the United States right now.
It’s not just another warehouse. We are talking about a phased 300MW build-out designed specifically to handle the kind of intense, soul-crushing workloads that modern AI requires. Most data centers are built to host websites or store your old photos. This one? It’s built to train the next generation of Large Language Models (LLMs).
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The $17 Billion Microsoft Handshake
The big news—the kind that makes Wall Street sit up and pay attention—dropped in late 2025. Nebius Group N.V. (NASDAQ: NBIS) announced a monster deal with Microsoft. We're talking a five-year agreement worth roughly $17.4 billion, which could potentially scale up to $19.4 billion.
Why does Microsoft care about a data center in South Jersey?
Basically, the tech giants are running out of room. Microsoft’s own CFO, Amy Hood, has been vocal about being "capacity constrained." They need GPUs, and they need them yesterday. By partnering with Nebius, Microsoft gets dedicated access to the Vineland facility's massive clusters of NVIDIA H200 and Blackwell GPUs. It's a win-win: Microsoft scales without more immediate Capex on their books, and Nebius cements itself as a top-tier "neocloud" provider.
What’s Actually Inside the Vineland Campus?
If you drive past the site, you'll see six massive buildings, each around 220,000 square feet. But the real magic is the stuff you can't see from the road.
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Nebius isn't just buying off-the-shelf servers. They design their own racks and hardware in-house. It’s an "OCP-style" (Open Compute Project) approach that lets them squeeze every bit of efficiency out of the cooling and power systems. In an era where AI chips run hot enough to cook an egg, that thermal management is everything.
- Total Capacity: The site is scalable up to 300MW.
- Rapid Deployment: The first phase was designed to go from "dirt" to "data" in about 20 weeks.
- Power Strategy: They are using "behind-the-meter" electricity solutions. This is a fancy way of saying they aren't just plugging into the local grid and hoping for the best; they are integrating localized power generation to avoid the years-long delays usually associated with utility interconnects.
- The Chips: Expect to see thousands of NVIDIA Blackwell B200 and H200 GPUs linked by high-speed InfiniBand networking.
Why Vineland? (The Geography of AI)
You might wonder why Nebius—an Amsterdam-based company with roots in the "Yandex" split—chose a spot in Cumberland County.
It’s about the "three Ps": Power, Proximity, and Permits. New Jersey has a surprisingly robust fiber backbone, and Vineland specifically offered the land and local cooperation needed for a project of this scale. Also, being a bit removed from the primary Northern New Jersey/New York data center clusters means they aren't competing for the exact same power lines as every other financial firm in Manhattan.
There’s also a sustainability angle here that people often miss. The Nebius Group AI data center Vineland uses an air-cooling system that drastically reduces water consumption compared to traditional evaporative cooling. In a world where data centers are being criticized for "thirst," using less water is a major PR and operational win.
The "Yandex" Elephant in the Room
You can’t talk about Nebius without mentioning where they came from. For years, the team was part of Yandex, often called the "Google of Russia." Following the invasion of Ukraine and subsequent sanctions, the company went through a massive, multi-year divorce.
The international assets were spun off into what is now Nebius Group, led by founder Arkady Volozh. They brought over 1,000 top-tier engineers with them. Volozh has been very clear: this isn't a search engine company anymore. It’s an AI infrastructure company. The Vineland project is their flag in the sand for the U.S. market.
Addressing the Local Skepticism
Not everyone in South Jersey is thrilled about a 2.6 million-square-foot neighbor. If you look at local forums or Reddit threads (shoutout to the r/NBIS_Stock community), there are real concerns. People worry about noise from the cooling fans, the strain on the Kirkwood-Cohansey Aquifer, and whether these "dozens of jobs" actually benefit the local workforce or just a few specialized tech transplants.
Nebius has tried to get ahead of this by highlighting their air-cooling tech (less water) and the use of gas generators with diesel backups to minimize grid impact. Still, the visual impact of six massive buildings where there used to be open space is a tough pill for some residents to swallow.
What This Means for 2026 and Beyond
As we move through 2026, the Vineland facility isn't just a construction site anymore—it’s a revenue engine. Analysts are projecting that Nebius could see its Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) jump into the $7 billion to $9 billion range by the end of the year if they hit their deployment targets.
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The competition is fierce, though. You’ve got companies like CoreWeave and Lambda Labs fighting for the same "specialized AI cloud" crown. But Nebius’s vertical integration—building the racks, the software stack, and the data centers—gives them a moat that's hard to replicate.
Actionable Insights for the AI Era:
- Watch the Power: If you’re looking at the future of AI, don’t just watch the chips; watch the power grid. Companies like Nebius that find ways to bypass traditional utility delays (behind-the-meter) will win the speed-to-market race.
- The Rise of "Neoclouds": The era of the "General Purpose Cloud" is fading for AI. Specialized providers who offer bare-metal performance and liquid-cooling readiness are becoming the preferred choice for serious ML researchers.
- Local Impact Matters: For businesses or investors, pay attention to the environmental permits. Projects that fail to address water usage or noise early on are facing increasing "NIMBY" (Not In My Backyard) roadblocks that can derail a $10 billion project in months.
The Nebius Group AI data center in Vineland is a high-stakes bet on the idea that the world’s hunger for compute is nowhere near its peak. Whether it’s helping Microsoft power the next version of Copilot or giving a scrappy startup the juice to train a niche medical AI, this New Jersey campus is officially a cornerstone of the global tech stack.