Nebius shares jumped 10% to a record. Will it buy a startup that Nvidia was interested in?

Shares of Nebius Group, which provides infrastructure for artificial intelligence, jumped almost 10% in trading on April 10 and hit an all-time high. A reason for optimism could be The Information's report that the company founded by billionaire Arkady Volozh may buy Israeli startup AI21 Labs, which specializes in corporate artificial intelligence systems. Earlier, the leading player in the AI hardware market, Nvidia, had been eyeing it.

Shares of Nebius at trades on April 10 grew in the moment by 9.9% and reached $149.82. This is a new record for the whole time of securities circulation on the stock exchange. Since the beginning of 2026 they are in the plus by 74%.

As reported by The Information, Nebius is in talks to buy AI21 - after the latter's deal with Nvidia fell apart. In December, Israeli publication Calcalist reported that Nvidia was in advanced talks to buy AI21 for $3 billion. The startup was valued at $1.4 billion in a funding round in 2023, with Nvidia and Google participating. The deal with Nvidia, however, was never finalized.

In addition to the possible purchase of AI21, investor interest in Nebius has been fueled by the start of coverage of the company's stock by analysts at Cantor Fitzgerald, notes The Motley Fool. According to MarketScreener, Cantor Fitzgerald has given the stock a buy recommendation (Overweight rating) and a target price of $129. This implies a 5% drop in the stock relative to the last closing price.

Interest from potential buyers, including Nvidia and Nebius, is largely due to AI21's talent pool: the company employs highly skilled AI researchers, Calcalist notes. For Nvidia, it was the team rather than the commercial scale of AI21's business that was thought to be more important to the market, the publication writes.

At the same time, Nebius is actively building a presence in the enterprise AI infrastructure segment, Calcalist notes. In February, the company acquired Israeli startup Tavily as part of its strategy to create a unified platform for the development and operation of AI agents. According to Calcalist, the deal could be worth up to $400 million. The potential purchase of AI21 fits into this strategy, allowing it to complement the platform with its own language models, the publication believes.

The financial terms of Nebius' negotiations with AI21 were not disclosed.

Founded in 2017, AI21 was one of the first companies to develop large-scale language models, CTech reports. However, in recent years, the startup has found it harder to compete with market leaders such as OpenAI and Anthropic.

The company has narrowed its focus to enterprise solutions, emphasizing accuracy and reliability. It has abandoned the development of its Wordtune consumer service and focused on products such as the Maestro platform and its recently introduced "reasoning" AI model, which can analyze tasks step-by-step and draw logical conclusions. The company's annual revenue is estimated at about $50 million.

Wall Street analysts' sentiment toward Nebius shares has improved over the past month: according to MarketWatch, the number of buy recommendations (Buy and Overweight ratings) increased from 13 to 14, while the number of neutral ratings (Hold) decreased from three to two. At the same time, one "bearish" rating (Underweight) appeared, although there were no such ratings a month earlier.

The average target price of $162 per share implies 19% growth of the quotations relative to the last closing price.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor