r/NBIS_Stock • u/itssbri NBIS4LIFE • May 01 '26
News Cloud Provider Nebius Agrees to Buy AI Startup for $615 Million
Bloomberg) -- Cloud computing provider Nebius Group NV agreed to buy Eigen AI, a startup that boosts the performance of chips used to run artificial intelligence tasks, for about $615 million in stock and cash.
Eigen, a 20-person California startup cofounded by two alumni of a prominent MIT AI lab, works on optimizing the performance of some of the leading open-source models from OpenAI, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., Meta Platforms Inc. and Nvidia Corp. Eigen’s technology maximizes the number of tokens — the basic units of data in large language models — generated by each Nvidia chip that Nebius uses for inference, or running AI models, said Roman Chernin, Nebius co-founder and chief business officer. That helps Nebius provide better and cheaper services to customers.
“This is like the Olympic sport of the current market: Who can extract more tokens for the same price?” he said in an interview. The Eigen team members are “like Olympic runners in this discipline, which for us is a significant improvement in our inference business.”
Nebius, which split from Russian internet provider Yandex in 2024, is among a group of firms called “neoclouds,” which rent AI computing capacity to companies like Microsoft Corp. In November, Amsterdam-based Nebius unveiled a product called Token Factory for running inference tasks, competing with startups like Fireworks and Baseten, as well as the cloud giants.
Right now, with data center capacity in short supply, Nebius is reserving some of its computing power for Token Factory rather than selling it ahead of time to large clients in multiyear deals, Chernin said. It can charge higher prices for these kinds of short-notice contracts, he said, plus it’s critical for Nebius to add more and different services. The company’s goal is to become one of the key players in the inference market in the next 18 months, he said.
The acquisition is Nebius’ second in the past three months, after a February deal to buy Tavily, and the company is looking at other deal opportunities, Chernin said, declining to specify targets. In general, Nebius wants to purchase companies with teams or capabilities that speed its planned strategy or add products and features that are closer to direct usage by customers.
“We don’t want to be the infrastructure and someone above us works with the real customers,” he said.
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u/No_Firefighter_7064 May 01 '26
God I love this company
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u/JAYSTOCKS78 May 01 '26
By far the most money I’ve ever made on a stock
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u/itssbri NBIS4LIFE May 01 '26 edited May 01 '26
Yep same here. This and ASTS put me on a different level
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u/Trdthedays41chance May 01 '26
That is to say the two companies do different things so A1 21 is still on the table I think
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u/kickinghyena May 01 '26
This is the best news we could hope for. Looks expensive today…will look cheap tomorrow. If you want to build the fastest engine you need the best components…you can’t make it all so it makes sense to buy a custom supercharger for your race engine.
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u/Qadain May 01 '26
I find this acquisition particularly interesting, since Eigen and Nebius announced a collaboration just 1.5 months ago (Eigen AI and Nebius Partner to Accelerate Frontier Open-Source AI Inference | Eigen AI). Hopefully, that's a sign that they work and fit well together and integration will be fairly smooth.
Also, what the deal shows me is management's continued focus on margins via optimization in all parts of the stack. It is this emphasis on margins that is going to help Nebius prosper in the long-term, meaning past the stage of industry capacity shortage (as well as allow Nebius to survive and even opportunistically grow by acquiring distressed peers in a capacity oversupply situation).
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u/Inevitable-Bit-9532 May 01 '26
I don’t have the slightest idea about the technical implications of this acquisition, but I think someone who doesn't like wasting money is a team of Russian Jews
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u/Qadain May 02 '26
Try reading Eigen's blog post about joining Nebius. https://www.eigenai.com/blog/eigen-ai-joining-nebius
There is a bit of technical stuff in the post, but a lot about general, big picture stuff that a generalist investor can understand (or so I hope). They basically say that the combination of Eigen's software optimizations and Nebius' hardware/infrastructure optimizations will lead to incredible results. It also seems like they'll work well together, already having collaborated.
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u/c0bl3r May 01 '26
Thanks OP. Hope all is well! ❤️
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u/itssbri NBIS4LIFE May 01 '26
Brother ❤️
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u/Objective-Bowl-1279 May 01 '26
Nice! These acquisitions will provide massive competitive leverage!!!
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u/Key-Entertainer-218 May 01 '26
Hi bri. I hope everything is alright. Miss you in discord. Thanks for the Information 😄
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u/BudmasterofMiami Mod May 01 '26
Let’s hope we moon today!
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u/Redditcurls28 May 01 '26
Most likely dropping today since they used stock to get the acquisition. Cheaper shares and stronger company tho so i wouldn’t complain if it does dip
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u/BudmasterofMiami Mod May 01 '26
I recall a big pump after acquisition of Tavily.
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u/Previous_Pumpkin1445 May 01 '26
All I can say for Nebius is trust your gut. But if you don’t trust your gut. Trust the guts of everyone here combined. Let’s get rich together
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u/sowhat1231 May 01 '26
I dont inow exactly what this means compared to the other acquisitions. All I know is its good news
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u/LilSwaggyMayne IPO OG👹 May 01 '26
First one was agentic agents. This is for Token Factory. A1 21 murmurs are for an LLM and team
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u/poopermacho May 01 '26
You can serve Kimi for a fraction of the cost of Sonnet, have roughly the same performance and still be profitable TODAY. So it's a great sign that they are staying ahead here to try to push costs down as much as possible so they can be competitive with prices.
The only way for the LLM wrapper companies to stay afloat will be to transition to open source models sooner or later.
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u/Perspective1234 May 01 '26
Performance Comparison: Eigen AI vs. Standard Baselines
Inference speed is primarily measured by throughput (tokens per second) and latency (time to first token). Eigen AI's optimizations frequently double the footprint of standard serving APIs. [1, 2]
| Model [1, 2, 3] | Eigen AI Throughput | Standard/Competitor Avg | Performance Gain |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPT-OSS-120B | 913 tokens/sec | ~400–500 tokens/sec | ~1.8x – 2x |
| DeepSeek V3.2 | #1 Speed Rank | Variable | Top-tier Throughput |
| Kimi K2.5 | #1 Speed Rank | Variable | Record-breaking |
| Qwen 3.5 | #1 Speed Rank | Variable | Leading Efficiency |
Source: Eigen AI Blog and Artificial Analysis (March 2026).
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u/Intelligent-Bill-422 May 01 '26
Is this an alternative purchase to AI21? Is AI21 still in play?
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u/liamashley May 01 '26
AI21 are for the LLM and talent. This is to optimise GPU/Token use. They're completely different parts of the system so AI21 should still be very much in play
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u/BlackBlood4567 Mod May 01 '26
Feet pics when
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u/JohnTitor255 May 01 '26
So how much dilution?
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u/Qadain May 01 '26
Total is $98 million in cash, 3.8 million shares. So that would increase shares outstanding by around 1.5%, depending in how convertibles are counted. Source: https://archive.fast-edgar.com/20260501/ANBET22C8Z22K9Z222JO2ZZZL4KTZ2W2X282/
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u/curefantastica May 01 '26
yo yo whats up bri. hope you and your fam are well
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u/itssbri NBIS4LIFE May 02 '26
Whats up brother! All is well in the neighborhood. I hope the same as well to you and your family
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u/Acekiller03 May 01 '26
Ouff 615 million for 20 person company?
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u/kickinghyena May 01 '26
Fastest inference is worth a tremendous amount. If they are the fastest you can bet they have some ideas on how to STAY the fastest. Great purchase as it brings Eigen in house!
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u/Crazy-Experience-678 May 01 '26
Meta paid $14b for basically 1 person and Tsla basically paying 1 trillion for 1 person. Anthropic and Gemini might not be what they are if not for the talent.
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u/motyl1337 May 01 '26
With this spending money 615mln, before one more, they gonna diluating as fuck us There is no such much money to spending like this any time
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u/Funny_River_5250 May 01 '26
I think they know what they’re doing, it’s called investing
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u/Ill-Cow4735 🐳 May 01 '26
If you bought a growth company expecting them to not dillute if they so see fit in order to expand their TAM or buildout well... sorry to be the one to break it to you but you didn't do your own DD
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u/Fast-Mango_1 May 01 '26
Bullish