NVIDIA Corp. announced that it will invest US$2 billion in Nebius Group NV as part of a strategic cooperation between the two parties to jointly develop and build a new generation of artificial intelligence data centers. The world's most valuable technology company is continuing to inject capital into its important chip buyers. The deal will help Amsterdam-based Nebius deploy more than 5 gigawatts of computing power based on Nvidia systems by 2030, consuming the equivalent of powering about 3.8 million homes at any given time, according to a statement released Wednesday by Amsterdam-based Nebius.
Boosted by the news, Nebius's stock price rose by about 10% in pre-market trading in New York. The stock has increased more than three times in the past year.
Nebius is one of the new entrants that has emerged rapidly with the current wave of artificial intelligence, focusing on building data centers tailored for training AI models and running services such as ChatGPT. Nvidia is using its strong financial strength to support the development of this group of "neocloud" operators. These new players are competing with traditional large cloud computing service providers such as Google, a subsidiary of Google's parent company Alphabet, and Amazon.com Inc., which are also developing their own AI acceleration chips.
Nvidia has recently made intensive investments in its AI ecosystem partners, with most of its funds flowing to its major chip customers. This "cyclical investment" model has also caused concerns among some market participants, who believe that it may contribute to valuation bubbles. In January this year, Nvidia just announced an investment of another US$2 billion in Nebius competitor CoreWeave Inc. to expand the latter's deployment of Nvidia products. Last month, Nvidia invested another US$30 billion in capital into OpenAI, and participated in the new British cloud company Nscale in a US$2 billion financing round disclosed this week.
NVIDIA's latest collaboration with Nebius will further build on the latter's already using NVIDIA tools and platforms. Nebius stated that the two parties will jointly design, build and operate an AI data center and create customized infrastructure for "inference" scenarios, that is, optimizing the online operation requirements of AI models that have completed training and various AI services.
In terms of company background, Nebius was formerly the Dutch holding entity of Russian Internet giant Yandex. In 2024, the company sold Yandex's Russian operations to a group of Russian investors for $5.2 billion and subsequently changed its name to Nebius. At the end of the same year, Nebius raised $700 million from a group of investors including Nvidia. According to a company document disclosed by Nvidia shortly after the completion of the above-mentioned investment, as of December 2024, the market value of Nvidia's Nebius shares is approximately US$33 million.
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