Shares of European AI "neocloud" Nebius Group (NBIS 3.53%) rallied on Friday, up 13.7% as of 2:54 p.m. EDT.
One of Nebius' neocloud peers received an analyst upgrade today; meanwhile, another sell-side analyst identified Nebius as a potential acquisition candidate for 2026.
NASDAQ: NBIS
Key Data Points
Could a U.S. tech giant buy Nebius?
First, Nebius was likely up in part due to widespread strength throughout the AI infrastructure sector today. This cohort of stocks has had a fantastic year, but recently ran into weakness after debt investors balked at lending to AI data centers in recent weeks. Others have fretted about any company with ties to OpenAI and its ambitious spending plans.
Still, there have been no tangible signs of a slowdown in demand. To that effect, Citi analyst Tyler Radke renewed his coverage of Nebius peer CoreWeave (CRWV 2.71%) today, giving the stock a "Buy" rating and a $135 price target. For reference, CoreWeave began the day at $67.68 and is up 22.5% on the day as of this writing. CoreWeave is also one of Nebius' main peers, so Radke's positive analysis of overwhelming demand for AI compute also bodes well for Nebius.
Additionally, Nebius was mentioned by another Wall Street analyst. Wedbush's analyst Dan Ives noted that 2026 could see an acquisition of one of the large neoclouds by a major cloud hyperscaler such as Amazon or Microsoft. Of the possible targets, Ives identified Nebius as the highest-probability target for hyperscalers.
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Nebius and neoclouds are high-risk, high-upside bets
AI neoclouds have been on a wild ride in 2025. Nebius, for its part, is up a whopping 220% on the year. That being said, the stock, like its AI peers, has pulled back a lot, down some 45% from its all-time highs in mid-October.
Whether the pullback is merely a healthy correction before more upside, or whether it portends something worse, will likely be determined by the ongoing demand for AI compute, the useful life of AI GPUs, and the supply constraints for power-connected land available for data centers. As of now, it doesn't appear that compute demand is slowing at all.
