Amsterdam-based Nebius Group NV, the AI infrastructure company, said it entered into definitive agreements for a $700 million private placement financing from a group of “institutional and accredited” investors, including participation from Accel, Nvidia, and certain accounts managed by Orbis Investments.

‍The financing supports Nebius’ previously announced plans to further build out its full-stack AI infrastructure – including large-scale GPU clusters, cloud platforms and tools and services for developers – for AI pioneers globally.

‍Nebius CEO Arkady Volozh said: “The foundation of our business is our expertise in building advanced technology infrastructure.

“We have demonstrated the scale of our ambitions, initiating an AI infrastructure build-out across two continents.

“This strategic financing gives us additional firepower to do it faster and on a larger scale. I’m grateful to our investors for the trust they have placed in us – our team is ready to deliver.”

‍Nebius said its full-stack AI infrastructure is being purpose-built to meet the demands of the global AI industry and leans on deep technical expertise across hardware and software, cloud engineering and machine learning (ML).

The firm said its core AI infrastructure business has around 400 engineers “with decades of knowledge of building world-class tech infrastructure, as well as an in-house large language model (LLM) R&D team.”

‍The company is pursuing an AI infrastructure build-out strategy which combines investments in build-to-suit data centers at greenfield sites with additional capacity deployments through colocations and the expansion of its existing facilities.

‍”The AI-native Nebius GPU cloud is designed to manage the full ML lifecycle – from data processing and training through to fine-tuning and inference – all in one place,” said Nebius.

“The recently launched Nebius AI Studio inference service expands the company’s offering to app builders, with access to a range of state-of-the-art open-source models in a flexible, user-friendly environment at among the lowest price-per-token on the market.”

‍In the private placement, Nebius will issue 33,333,334 Class A shares at a price per share of $21, which represents an approximately 3% premium to the volume-weighted average price of the Class A shares since the resumption of trading on Nasdaq. ‍

“In connection with the private placement, the Board of Directors of the company is delighted to grant observer rights to Matt Weigand, a partner at Accel, and intends to nominate Mr. Weigand for election as a director at the 2025 Annual General Meeting of Shareholders,” said Nebius.

“In addition, having considered the strong trading dynamics and liquidity profile in the company’s shares since the resumption of trading on Nasdaq on October 21, 2024, the board has determined that a potential repurchase by the company of its Class A shares is no longer warranted.

‍”At the company’s Annual General Meeting of Shareholders in August 2024, shareholders approved a general authorization for the company to repurchase up to 81 million Class A shares within certain parameters, including a maximum repurchase price of $10.50 per share.

“This price represented the pro-rata amount of cash on the company’s balance sheet following the final closing of the company’s divestment of its Russian business, net of tax and transaction costs, and was not an indication of the value of the current business.”

‍Nebius chairman John Boynton said: “The authorization to potentially repurchase shares was originally intended to provide legacy shareholders who wanted to exit our new business an opportunity to do so, especially in light of the prolonged suspension of trading on Nasdaq.

“Based on the strong level of investor engagement and technical dynamics which we have observed following the resumption of trading on Nasdaq, we believe that those shareholders who may have wanted to exit have had an opportunity to do so at a price higher than the maximum repurchase price authorized by shareholders.

‍“The board has determined that the best way to maximize value for the company’s shareholders is to invest our capital into our core AI infrastructure business, where the company believes there is a substantial market opportunity.”

‍‍Nebius added: “As a result of the combination of the strategic financing and the decision not to deploy any capital toward repurchasing Class A shares, the company is in a position to narrow its previous guidance, and now expects to deliver an ARR by year-end 2025 of USD 750 million to USD 1.0 billion.

‍”Goldman Sachs Bank Europe SE is acting as sole placement agent for the company and no one else in connection with the private placement and will not be responsible to anyone other than the company for providing the protections afforded to clients of Goldman Sachs nor for providing advice in connection with the private placement or any other matters referred to in this press release.”

‍Headquartered in Amsterdam and listed on Nasdaq, Nebius has a global footprint with R&D hubs across Europe, North America and Israel.