Nebius (NBIS) Stock Jumps as Ex-OpenAI Researcher Takes 5.6% Stake

TLDR

• Ex-OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner’s hedge fund Situational Awareness bought 12.4 million Nebius (NBIS) stock, taking a 5.6% ownership stake.
• Nebius posted Q1 revenue of $399 million, up 684% year over year, and is targeting $7–9 billion in annualized revenue by year-end.
• NBIS stock is up over 176% in 2026, trading around $231, with a market cap of $58 billion.
• Analyst sentiment is mixed-to-bullish, with a Moderate Buy consensus and price targets ranging from $144 (Morgan Stanley) to $270 (Citizens JMP).
• CEO Arkadiy Volozh and Director Elena Bunina have both sold stock in recent months, while institutional ownership stands at 21.9%.

Nebius Group (NBIS) stock has been one of the AI infrastructure stories of 2026. Trading around $231 as of Monday, the neocloud company saw fresh attention this week after a high-profile hedge fund disclosed a major stake.

Nebius Group N.V., NBIS

Leopold Aschenbrenner — a former OpenAI researcher and founder of Situational Awareness, which manages roughly $13.7 billion — filed a 13G with the SEC showing a purchase of 12.4 million NBIS stock. That puts the fund’s ownership at 5.6% of the company.

The buy fits a clear pattern across Aschenbrenner’s book. Situational Awareness already holds positions in Iren (IREN) and CoreWeave (CRWV), two other neocloud companies that lease GPU capacity for AI workloads. The Nebius purchase rounds out what looks like a deliberate trifecta of pure-play AI infrastructure bets.

Neoclouds differ from traditional hyperscalers like AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud in that they focus entirely on GPU-intensive compute. They don’t bundle in storage, databases, or analytics — it’s raw GPU horsepower, purpose-built for model training and inference. The business case is straightforward: hyperscalers aren’t building GPU capacity fast enough, so they’re increasingly turning to neoclouds to fill the gap.

Strong Revenue Growth Behind the Hype

Nebius’s latest earnings gave bulls plenty to work with. The company reported Q1 revenue of $399 million, beating analyst estimates of $375 million. That’s a 684% jump compared to the same quarter last year. EPS came in at -$0.23, well ahead of the -$0.77 consensus.

Management has set an aggressive revenue target: $7 billion to $9 billion in annualized run rate by the end of 2026. At a current market cap of $58 billion, that puts the forward price-to-sales ratio at roughly 6.4x at the high end — not cheap, but not absurd for a company growing at this pace with multi-year contracts from major AI players.

Nebius also raised its 2026 capex guidance to $20 billion–$25 billion, pointing to sold-out AI capacity and demand commitments stretching into 2027.

Analyst Views and Insider Activity

Wall Street’s take on NBIS is mixed but leans positive. The stock carries a Moderate Buy consensus. Citizens JMP raised its price target to $270, Bank of America lifted to $205, and Morgan Stanley nudged its target to $144 with an Equal Weight rating.

Institutional ownership sits at 21.9% of outstanding stock. Rovida Investment Management, despite trimming its position by 16.6% in Q4, still holds NBIS as its largest position at 20.8% of the portfolio.

On the insider side, CEO Arkadiy Volozh sold 33,358 shares in April at an average price of $103.73, reducing his ownership by 3.7%. Director Elena Bunina sold 10,894 shares in May at $206.87, cutting her stake by over 50%.

Insiders have sold a combined $123.5 million worth of stock over the past three months. NBIS hit a 52-week high of $233.73, while its 52-week low sits at $34.72.

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