Shares in AI infrastructure group Nebius (NBIS) marched 7% higher today after Amazon (AMZN) founder Jeff Bezos took part in a $72 million investment round into its Toloka business.
Milestone Investment
Nebius said it welcomed the strategic investment led by Bezos Expeditions, the investment arm of Bezos with participation from Mikhail Parakhin, CTO of Shopify (SHOP) into its AI data solutions group Toloka. Indeed, Parakhin will join the Toloka board as executive chairman.
Nebius said the investment marked a pivotal step in Toloka’s evolution, and will enable the company to scale rapidly and “sharpen its strategic focus amid accelerating global demand for reliable, high-quality AI data solutions.”
Toloka helps train and evaluate AI models using a network of human experts and testers and has worked with Amazon, Microsoft (MSFT) and Anthropic.
According to Reuters, Toloka founder and CEO Olga Megorskaya said the Bezos-led strategic investment was a milestone that should accelerate the company’s growth, particularly in the U.S. market, and support its development of products.
“There will always be the need for control, verification, and help from human experts to ensure that the result is actually of high quality,” Megorskaya told Reuters.
Blue Chip Pull
Toloka certainly has the human touch when it comes to attracting blue-chip names. Semiconductor giant Nvidia (NVDA) was among the investors in a $700 million private placement raised by Nebius late last year.
Nebius will retain a significant majority economic stake in the business but will relinquish majority voting control.
“The important thing about this round is that we gained the needed flexibility to operate independently,” Megorskaya said. Toloka is anticipated to launch another investment round in the future.
According to its website Bezos Expeditions also has investments in companies such as Twitter, Uber (UBER) and Airbnb (ABNB).
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