Nebius stock closed 18.78% higher on Tuesday after Nvidia disclosed a 9.3% stake in the Amsterdam-based AI cloud provider.

The neocloud company has emerged as one of Europe's leading AI infrastructure providers, with shares gaining nearly 250% over the past 12 months. Its market cap reached $46 billion as of Tuesday morning.

Nvidia previously announced it would invest $2 billion in Nebius in March as part of a broader collaboration on AI infrastructure deployment, fleet management, and AI factory design.

Strategic partnerships fuel growth

The Dutch company has secured major deals with tech giants throughout 2026. Meta signed a long-term agreement in March to spend up to $27 billion on Nebius' AI infrastructure.

Nvidia has been systematically building stakes in promising AI companies. The chip giant contributed $30 billion to OpenAI's $110 billion funding round in March and participated in Anthropic's $30 billion raise in February.

Freedom Capital Markets upgraded Nebius to a buy rating on Monday, calling the company's recent $775 million debt facility a "positive catalyst." The senior secured debt is backed by deployed GPU infrastructure and contracted cash flows from an investment-grade customer.

The debt facility represents Nebius' first major financing backed by its physical AI infrastructure assets. This structure reflects the company's transition from a traditional cloud provider to an AI-focused infrastructure specialist.

Nebius operates large-scale GPU clusters for training and inference workloads, positioning itself as critical infrastructure for the AI boom. The company's partnership with Nvidia extends beyond investment to include technical collaboration on next-generation AI systems.

The stock surge reflects investor confidence in Nebius' ability to capitalize on surging demand for AI compute resources. Enterprise customers are increasingly seeking specialized infrastructure providers that can deliver the scale and performance required for modern AI workloads.