Shares of Nebius Group N.V. surged on Monday, extending a rally that has made it one of the most closely watched AI infrastructure plays this year. The stock closed up 14.5% at $264.51 on Nasdaq, after touching a 52-week high of $274.80 earlier in the session. Trading volume exceeded 24 million shares, well above the recent average, and the stock edged up another 0.7% in after-hours trading.
The catalyst came from Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who mentioned Nebius during his keynote at Computex in Taipei. According to reports, Huang said Nvidia has worked with Nebius and described the company as “growing incredibly fast.” The endorsement from the chip giant's leader added fuel to a move already underway after a regulatory filing revealed that Situational Awareness and related entities, including Leopold Aschenbrenner, had acquired a 5.6% stake in Nebius Class A shares, representing 12.41 million shares.
Nebius is part of a newer category of cloud providers known as “neoclouds.” Unlike traditional cloud giants such as Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure, these specialist companies lease large pools of Nvidia-backed computing power to AI startups and businesses. The company's first-quarter revenue came in at $399.0 million, a staggering 684% increase from the same period last year. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $129.5 million, providing a basic measure of operational performance that investors closely watch.
Citigroup raised its price target on Nebius to $287 from $169, maintaining a Buy rating. That target stands above most other analyst estimates, which generally lag the current share price. Some on Wall Street see limited upside after the stock's recent run-up.
The broader AI infrastructure trade was also buoyant. CoreWeave, a listed AI-cloud firm with close ties to Nvidia hardware demand, climbed 14.0% on Monday, mirroring Nebius's move. That suggests investors are rotating into the wider theme of AI computing demand, not just a single name.
Nebius also announced that it is among the first users of Nvidia's Vera Rubin platform, working on integrated AI hardware and software. This includes the Nebius AI Cloud, Token Factory inference layer, and a Physical AI Workbench. CEO Arkady Volozh said the deal aims to reduce the time developers spend on basic infrastructure setup, arguing that they should not be spending weeks “wiring together infrastructure.”
Investors are now looking ahead to Wednesday, when Nebius co-founder and chief business officer Roman Chernin is scheduled to present at the BofA Securities Global Technology Conference at 4:20 p.m. EDT. The event will provide another opportunity to assess demand, capacity, and margin assumptions after Monday's sharp move.
Despite the optimism, risks remain. If chip supplies improve, large buyers push back contracts, borrowing costs rise, or investor appetite for high revenue multiples cools, the stock could fall quickly. For now, however, Nebius remains a crowded trade for those betting that AI computing demand will continue to outpace supply.
