Amsterdam-based Nebius Group, an AI infrastructure company, announced on Monday that it has entered into definitive agreements for a $700M (approximately €667M) private placement financing from a select group of institutional and accredited investors.
It includes participation from Accel, NVIDIA, and certain accounts managed by Orbis Investments.
The Dutch company will use the funds to further build out its full-stack AI infrastructure – including large-scale GPU clusters, cloud platforms, and tools and services for developers.
Arkady Volozh, founder and CEO of Nebius Group, says, “The foundation of our business is our expertise in building advanced technology infrastructure. We have demonstrated the scale of our ambitions, initiating an AI infrastructure build-out across two continents. This strategic financing gives us additional firepower to do it faster and on a larger scale. I’m grateful to our investors for the trust they have placed in us – our team is ready to deliver.”
Issuing Class A shares
Nebius Group will issue 33,333,334 Class A shares for $21.00 each in a private placement. This price is about 3% higher than the average price of the shares since trading started again on Nasdaq. The deal will close once standard conditions are met, says the company in the press release.
Additionally, the Board has decided that the Company no longer needs to buy back its Class A shares after seeing strong trading and liquidity since trading resumed on Nasdaq on October 21, 2024.
In August 2024, shareholders approved a plan to repurchase up to 81M Class A shares at a maximum price of $10.50 each. This price was based on available cash after selling the Company’s Russian business.
John Boynton, Chairman of the Board of Nebius, says, “The authorisation to potentially repurchase shares was originally intended to provide legacy shareholders who wanted to exit our new business an opportunity to do so, especially in light of the prolonged suspension of trading on Nasdaq. Based on the strong level of investor engagement and technical dynamics that we have observed following the resumption of trading on Nasdaq, we believe that those shareholders who may have wanted to exit have had an opportunity to do so at a price higher than the maximum repurchase price authorised by shareholders,”
“The Board has determined that the best way to maximise value for the Company’s shareholders is to invest our capital into our core AI infrastructure business, where the Company believes there is a substantial market opportunity,” adds Boynton.
As a result of the combination of strategic financing and the decision not to deploy any capital toward repurchasing Class A shares, the Company now expects to deliver an annualised run-rate revenue (“ARR”)1 by year-end 2025 of $750M to $1B.
Nebius Group: Building AI infrastructure
Founded by Arkady Volozh, Nebius is a technology company that provides the infrastructure needed for the global AI industry. This includes GPU clusters, cloud platforms, and tools for developers.
The company’s core business is an AI-centric cloud platform built for intensive AI workloads.
With proprietary cloud software architecture and hardware designed in-house (including servers, racks, and data centre design), Nebius gives AI builders the computing, storage, managed services, and tools they need to build, tune, and run their models.
The AI-native Nebius GPU cloud is designed to manage the full ML lifecycle – from data processing and training to fine-tuning and inference – all in one place.
The new Nebius AI Studio inference service expands the company’s offerings for app developers. It provides access to advanced open-source models in a user-friendly environment at competitive prices per token.
The Dutch company, a preferred cloud service provider in the NVIDIA Partner Network, offers high-end infrastructure optimised for AI training and inference.
The company’s core AI infrastructure division is supported by a team of approximately 400 skilled engineers, delivering a genuine hyperscale cloud experience tailored specifically for AI developers.
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