It was a volatile day on Wall Street as the Federal Reserve held interest rates steady at its Federal Open Market Committee meeting. The Fed noted increasing uncertainty and risks of slow growth and rising prices, however.
Yet shares of artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure company Nebius Group (NBIS 4.13%) soared above the Fed noise. The stock closed the trading session nearly 10% higher. That's because one of its company holdings just received an investment from a big-name technology investor.
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Jeff Bezos invests
Netherlands-based Nebius emerged last year out of the restructuring of Russian search engine giant Yandex. Nebius consists of a core AI infrastructure business as well as three additional business holdings. One of those is Toloka, a data partner for AI development including training and evaluation.
Today, Nebius announced a strategic investment in Toloka led by Bezos Expeditions, the private investment office of the Amazon founder and tech entrepreneur. Mikhail Parakhin, chief technology officer (CTO) of Shopify is also participating.
The $72 million investment will allow Toloka to embark in its own strategic direction to create long-term value, while Nebius will retain a significant majority economic stake. Toloka uses a growing network of human specialists to evaluate and test AI models. Nebius will continue to focus on its core business of cloud platforms using AI infrastructure built for AI workloads.
Toloka will create a new board of directors following the finalization of the investment. The new strategy can boost the value for Nebius as Toloka enters a new phase of growth. It already partners with well-known technology companies including Amazon and Shopify along with AI developer Anthropic.
Investors are joining the big tech investors buying into Nebius stock today. That might turn out to be a smart move as AI infrastructure investments continue to grow quickly.
