Situational Awareness Acquires Major Stake in Nebius Group
Date: May 28, 2026
A new regulatory filing has put Nebius Group back in the spotlight. Situational Awareness LP, the hedge fund founded by former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner, disclosed a 5.6% stake in Nebius Group N.V. (NASDAQ: NBIS), making it one of the fund’s most notable public bets since launching in September 2024.
The position, revealed in a Schedule 13G filed on May 27, covers 12,410,060 Class A ordinary shares. For retail investors, the message is straightforward: a fund built around the long-term buildout of AI infrastructure is placing a meaningful wager on Nebius at a moment when demand for computing power is accelerating.
The market reacted quickly. Nebius shares traded between $198.31 and $240.89 on May 27, underscoring both investor enthusiasm and the stock’s volatility. Even so, the filing stands out less for the short-term price swing than for what it suggests about conviction in the company’s role within the AI infrastructure race.
The Strategic Position and Market Context
Situational Awareness’s 5.6% ownership is based on 220,406,311 Class A ordinary shares outstanding as of March 31, 2026. The filing shows that voting and dispositive power is shared among Situational Awareness LP, SA LLC, Leopold Aschenbrenner, and Carl Shulman.
The stake fits neatly with Aschenbrenner’s public investment thesis: that AI progress is moving quickly, and that the companies controlling the physical infrastructure behind that progress may be more valuable than the market fully appreciates. That helps explain the fund’s broader focus on infrastructure-heavy names, including crypto-mining companies, while also holding put options against semiconductor manufacturers.
Nebius, in that framework, is not just another AI stock. It is a direct play on the computing, power, and data-center capacity needed to support the next phase of AI adoption.
Nebius Group's Financial Trajectory and Expansion
Nebius’s first-quarter results help explain why the company has attracted that kind of attention. Revenue rose to $399.0 million in Q1 2026, up 684% from $50.9 million a year earlier. Adjusted EBITDA improved to $129.5 million from a loss of $53.7 million, a sign that the AI cloud platform is beginning to scale.
A few numbers stand out:
- Situational Awareness disclosed ownership of 12.41 million Nebius shares, equal to 5.6% of the company
- Nebius reported Q1 2026 revenue of $399.0 million, up 684% year over year
- Cash and cash equivalents reached $9.30 billion as of March 31, 2026
- The company raised about $6.34 billion through convertible notes and prefunded warrants
- Nebius secured up to 1.2 GW of power and land for a new AI factory campus in Pennsylvania
Key Insight: Nebius is no longer just a high-growth story; it is becoming a heavily capitalized infrastructure platform with the balance sheet to expand aggressively.
That said, the picture is not without complications. Nebius still posted an operating loss of $128.0 million in the quarter, as total operating costs and expenses climbed to $527.0 million. Net income from continuing operations swung to a profit of $621.2 million, but that was driven largely by a $780.6 million gain from the revaluation of equity investments. In other words, core profitability remains a work in progress.
The Competitive AI Infrastructure Landscape
Nebius is operating in a market that is growing fast but getting crowded. The global AI infrastructure market is projected to reach $90 billion in 2026 and $465 billion by 2033. Specialized GPU cloud providers such as CoreWeave, alongside legacy cloud giants, are all competing for share.
Nebius’s 2026 revenue target of up to $3.4 billion puts it firmly in the conversation, though still behind larger rivals. Its partnership with Bloom Energy and its push to secure power capacity could prove especially important in an industry where access to electricity is becoming a strategic advantage.
Implications for Investors and Forward Outlook
For investors, the filing is a signal worth watching. It suggests that one AI-focused fund sees Nebius as a serious infrastructure asset, not just a momentum trade. But the investment case still depends on execution: converting rapid revenue growth into operating leverage, deploying capital efficiently, and holding its own in an intensely competitive market.
Nebius has scale, fresh capital, and ambitious expansion plans. Now it has a high-profile shareholder making a public vote of confidence. In a market increasingly defined by who controls the physical backbone of AI, that may matter as much as any quarterly headline.