Neoclaud "Nebius" Volozha acquires the startup Eigen, which accelerates and reduces the cost of artificial intelligence systems

Nebius acquires startup Eigen AI for $643 million

Cloud infrastructure provider Nebius announced the completion of its acquisition of California-based startup Eigen AI, which develops technologies to improve chip efficiency for artificial intelligence tasks. The total transaction value is $643 million.

Deal structure
- Cash payment: $98 million

- Transfer of Nebius shares: 3.8 million shares (valued at the weighted average price over the last 30 days)

Eigen AI is a small California company with only 20 employees. Its founders are alumni of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s AI lab (MIT). The startup specializes in optimizing open‑source models, including work from OpenAI, Alibaba, Meta✴, and Nvidia.

Eigen technology
The Eigen technology increases the number of tokens generated during inference of large language models without increasing compute costs. This is especially relevant for deployment on Nvidia accelerators, where each additional token boosts efficiency and cost effectiveness.

> “It’s like an Olympic sport in today’s market: who can get more tokens for the same price?” explained Roman Chernin, co‑founder and chief commercial officer of Nebius.

> “Eigen engineers are like Olympic sprinters in this discipline, which is a significant improvement for us in inference business,” he added.

How it fits into Nebius’s strategy
Nebius is actively developing its AI model deployment capability. As part of this effort the company launched Token Factory, which uses some of its own capacity that isn’t earmarked for long‑term contracts with large clients. This allows:

1. Raising prices for short‑term services

2. Expanding the range of offered services

Over the next year and a half Nebius plans to become one of the market leaders in inference.

Future acquisitions
Chernin emphasized that the company will continue to seek and acquire companies that help execute Nebius’s strategy or add value for customers.

“We don’t want to stay just as infrastructure so that someone above us works with real clients,” he concluded.

Thus, acquiring Eigen AI strengthens Nebius’s position in high‑performance inference and opens new opportunities for growth and service development.