Nebius Group shares jumped 10% Wednesday following a major announcement: Nvidia will invest $2 billion in the specialized AI cloud provider. The move signals Nvidia's deepening commitment to shaping the infrastructure behind artificial intelligence.

Under the agreement, the two companies will work jointly on deploying AI infrastructure, managing large-scale computing fleets, and designing so-called 'AI factories.' Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang stated the investment stems from confidence in Nebius's technical team, calling the company's cloud a 'fully integrated system from silicon to software' built for an era of advanced AI agents.

This is the latest in a series of strategic plays by the chip giant. Just last week, Nvidia unveiled similar $2 billion partnerships with Lumentum and Coherent, following a December stake in Synopsys. On Tuesday, it announced a separate 'significant investment' in Thinking Machines Lab, led by Mira Murati. Nvidia's aggressive investment portfolio also includes a $30 billion contribution to OpenAI's recent funding round and a planned $10 billion for Anthropic.

Nvidia, whose processors are essential for training AI models, is leveraging its capital to foster an ecosystem reliant on its technology. The Nebius deal accelerates the cloud company's existing plans to deploy Nvidia systems at a massive scale, including in multiple U.S.-based data centers with gigawatt-level power capacity.

'We designed this cloud specifically for AI development from the start,' said Nebius CEO Arkady Volozh. 'Partnering with Nvidia allows us to extend that vision across the entire stack, from large-scale factories to the software layer, creating a foundational platform for builders.'

Source: CNBC