Shares of Nebius Group N.V. (NASDAQ:NBIS) are rallying sharply during Thursday’s trading session. The upward price action follows a major regulatory filing revealing significant institutional backing from a prominent artificial intelligence insider.
According to a Schedule 13G filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), hedge fund Situational Awareness LP disclosed a 5.6% passive stake in Nebius Group. The fund, managed by former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner alongside co-portfolio manager Carl Shulman, reported holding 12,410,060 Class A ordinary shares.
Based on current market valuations, this position is worth approximately $2.6 billion. The event requiring the filing occurred on May 19, with the document officially signed and credited on Wednesday.
Aggressive AI Infrastructure Bets
The multi-billion-dollar investment aligns with Aschenbrenner's public thesis on the aggressive scaling of AI infrastructure.
In his research series Situational Awareness: The Decade Ahead, Aschenbrenner emphasized that “American big business is gearing up to pour trillions of dollars into a long-unseen mobilization of American industrial might.”
His fund’s position in Nebius underscores a calculated bet on companies supporting the upcoming “trillion-dollar cluster” era of compute and data center expansion.
Fueling The Short Squeeze
Data from the latest reporting period shows that short interest in Nebius Group increased from 43.14 million to 45.10 million shares. This short exposure represents 21.1% of the company’s publicly available float.
With an average daily volume of 19.60 million shares, short sellers face a days-to-cover metric of 2.3 days.
What Is Nebius Group and Its Business Model?
Nebius is a vertically integrated cloud provider focusing on AI and high-performance computing. It is a carve-out of the previous Russian tech firm Yandex, following the Russian sanctions since the Ukraine-Russia war.
Nebius designs and operates its own data centers and servers across Europe and the US, with a total capacity of several hundred megawatts. In September, Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT) became a major Nebius client under a multiyear $17 billion revenue agreement to provide computing capacity.
NBIS Stock Price Activity: Nebius Group shares were up 8.33% at $225.73 at the time of publication on Thursday, according to Benzinga Pro data.
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