(Bloomberg) -- Nebius Group NV, the technology company rebranded from Russian internet giant Yandex, has raised $700 million from a slate of investors including Nvidia Corp. and Accel Partners LP.
With the private placement financing, Nebius will issue 33.3 million shares at $21 each, according to a statement on Monday. The company said it is shelving earlier plans for a share buyback.
Nebius, which is based in Amsterdam, renamed itself earlier this year after selling its business in Russia, including the nation’s popular search engine. Yandex shares on Nasdaq were suspended after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Nebius resumed trading on the exchange in October.
The leaner company is focused on offering cloud-computing services for artificial intelligence, competing with firms like CoreWeave Inc. and larger cloud operators. Arkady Volozh, chief executive officer of Nebius, said the financing will support the expansion of its “GPU clusters” — a package of specialized AI chips and cloud services within data centers.
Nebius shares jumped about 16% to $25.50 in premarket trading in New York on Monday after closing on Friday at $21.99.
Huge sums of money are flowing from major corporate and financial investors into the technology that underpins AI. CoreWeave, which also counts Nvidia as a backer, is planning a public listing worth $23 billion.
Volozh said he hopes Nebius can get early access to Nvidia’s hotly-anticipated Blackwell chips, but the investment does not guarantee that. “The deal is not about the GPUs,” he said. “But, of course, it shows our close relationship, which we hope will influence our pipeline.”
He said he expects Nebius to issue another “probably much bigger” capital raise in 2025.
(Updates with premarket shares)
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