• Eigen cofounder claims inference is “the fastest-growing segment of AI,” which he expects will make up for about two-thirds of compute demand this year.
• Researchers from Eigen AI will establish a Nebius engineering and research presence in the San Francisco Bay Area.
• The company stated that the deal consideration will be paid in a combination of cash and Nebius’s Class A shares and added that the transaction is expected to close in the coming weeks.

Shares of Amsterdam-based Nebius Group N.V. (NBIS) surged over 11% on Friday after the company announced a $643 million deal to buy Eigen AI, a U.S.-based AI inference and model optimization company.

The company stated that the deal consideration will be paid in a combination of cash and Nebius’s Class A shares and added that the transaction is expected to close in the coming weeks.

Under the terms of the acquisition, researchers from Eigen will establish an engineering and research hub for Nebius in the San Francisco Bay Area as the Dutch company deepens its presence in the U.S. artificial intelligence market, which is currently the global leader.

The AI boom in the United States has led companies to discover new use cases for the promising technology, which can be applied across almost every industry, and has prompted them to pour billions of dollars into building infrastructure to generate compute capacity. 

Zooming In On The Deal 

The deal will merge Eigen AI's inference stack with Nebius's global capacity and AI cloud platform.

“Nebius has built a world-class AI cloud with a deep engineering culture that perfectly aligns with our own,” said Eigen AI cofounder Ryan Hanrui Wang. “Together, we are removing the friction of AI model customization and deployment so developers can run models reliably in production without managing the underlying infrastructure.”

Wang claims that inference is “the fastest-growing segment of AI,” which he expects will make up about two-thirds of compute demand this year.

Once the deal closes, Eigen AI’s inference and post-training optimization layers will be integrated directly into Nebius Token Factory, the companies said.

How Did Retail Traders React? 

On Stocktwits, retail sentiment about NBIS turned ‘bullish’ from  ‘neutral’ over the last 24 hours.

One user on the platform wrote that the company stands to benefit from hyperscalers running Nebius’ inference.

NBIS stock has risen 84% year-to-date and has gained nearly sixfold over the last 12 months. 

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