The artificial intelligence infrastructure sector saw two major announcements on Thursday, as Cerebras Systems (CBRS) and Meta Platforms (META) each outlined aggressive expansion plans. Cerebras revealed a multi-billion-dollar push into Europe, while Meta’s recent entry into the neocloud business continued to draw analyst upgrades.
Cerebras’ European Data Center Buildout
Cerebras said it will bring its first European data center capacity online before the end of 2026, with rapid deployments planned across France and the Nordics. The company is targeting a combined 200 megawatts of power capacity by the end of 2027. Part of that capacity will be allocated to OpenAI workloads under an existing partnership — a signal of the enormous inference demand driving the expansion.
CEO Andrew Feldman, speaking at the RAISE Summit in Paris, stressed that demand from European enterprises, governments, and research institutions is growing “faster than we can keep up.” He cited data sovereignty as a key factor, telling AFP: “By putting data centres across Europe, we think that we can meet all the unique European requirements.” Cerebras, which went public in May in one of the 15 largest IPOs in Wall Street history, claims its Wafer Scale Engine 3 chips outperform Nvidia’s GPUs for AI inference. The stock jumped roughly 7% in pre-market trading following the announcement. Wall Street already holds a Strong Buy consensus on CBRS, with an average price target of $296.44 — implying 63.1% upside.
Meta’s Neocloud Bet Gains Traction
Meta is also pivoting to sell computing power externally, entering the neocloud space after being one of the world’s largest compute buyers. The move initially spooked some cloud stocks but has been endorsed by prominent investor Jim Cramer, who argued the premium pricing signals a capacity shortage, not an oversupply. META is up about $50 since the announcement, trading near $605.72 on Thursday.
Wolfe Research reiterated an Outperform rating and $800 price target, while hiking its 2027 capex estimate to $220 billion — well above the Street consensus of $160 billion or more. For 2026, Meta expects $125–$145 billion in capex. The firm added that Meta now projects roughly 17 gigawatts of capacity next year. To justify such spending, Wolfe said Meta must demonstrate durable non-advertising revenue. Meanwhile, Meta broke ground on a CAD $13 billion AI-optimized data center in Alberta, Canada, and is integrating its Muse Image model into ad tools. Erste Group upgraded META to Buy, and Truist Securities kept a Buy rating, citing AI distribution advantages.
