The Buy & Hold Case Is Quietly Strengthening (From Darwin)
Whale Watching: BlackRock’s Massive Bet on Nebius Group Written by Jeffrey Neal Johnson on February 17, 2026 
Article Highlights - The world's largest asset manager has moved from a passive observer to a top stakeholder by executing an accumulation strategy in the Nebius Group.
- Major technology clients are funding the aggressive infrastructure expansion through prepayments to secure future computing capacity for artificial intelligence.
- The strategic acquisition of a specialized search platform allows Nebius to evolve from a commodity hardware renter into an essential software provider.
Retail investors live in a world defined by daily headlines. A missed earnings estimate or a slight delay in a product launch can send share prices tumbling as individual traders react to immediate news. Emotions run high, and decisions are often made out of fear of loss or missing out. However, the world’s largest asset managers play an entirely different game. They look at data over years, not quarters. They analyze structural shifts in the global economy rather than the daily ticker-tape movement. In the case of Nebius Group (NASDAQ: NBIS), recent market activity has been volatile following a mixed fourth-quarter earnings report. While the market debated the timing of the company's revenue and its short-term misses, regulatory filings revealed that smart money was quietly executing a massive accumulation strategy. The latest 13F filings, quarterly reports that disclose the holdings of major investment firms, show that BlackRock Inc. (NYSE: BLK), the world’s largest asset manager, has taken a substantial position in the artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure company. While the retail market was nervous, BlackRock was buying, signaling a level of conviction that creates a psychological floor for Nebius’s stock price, suggesting that the professionals see value where others see risk. Watch Now! Porter Stansberry & Luke Lango join forces to unveil:
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"We have never seen wealth created at this size and speed" MIT Researcher Click here for the stocks to buy and sell now Inside the 9.4 Million Share Purchase The raw data from the recent regulatory filing tells a story of aggressive accumulation. According to the 13F-HR form filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Feb. 12, 2026, BlackRock Inc. owned 9,431,400 shares of Nebius Group as of Dec. 31, 2025. Based on the closing price at the end of that reporting period, this position was valued at approximately $789 million. To understand the magnitude of this purchase, investors need to look at the trend line from the previous quarter. - Previous Filing: BlackRock reported holding 23,866 shares in November 2025.
- Current Filing: BlackRock reports holding 9,431,400 shares in December 2025.
- The Delta: This represents a quarter-over-quarter increase of approximately 39,418%.
Institutional investing firms often take toe-hold positions, small stakes used to monitor a company’s performance without committing significant capital. The move from 23,000 shares to over 9.4 million shares indicates a strategic shift from monitoring to high-conviction ownership. BlackRock has effectively moved from a passive observer to a top-tier stakeholder. This volume of buying is rarely an accident or a simple index adjustment; it typically represents a calculated capital allocation strategy by one of the most sophisticated investment teams in the world. They are not just testing the waters; they are diving in. Prepaid Success: The $20 Billion Blueprint Why would an institutional giant pour nearly $800 million into a company that just missed Wall Street’s revenue estimates? The answer likely lies in the company's aggressive 2026 guidance and how that money is being spent. In its recent earnings report, Nebius management forecasted a capital expenditure (CAPEX) plan of $16 billion to $20 billion for 2026. To an inexperienced investor, spending $20 billion might look like dangerous cash burn. Historically, companies that spend faster than they earn are considered high-risk. However, institutional analysts view this specific situation differently. In the current AI supply shortage, you generally do not spend billions on infrastructure unless you have customers waiting to use it. BlackRock is likely buying the Revenue Backlog. - The Funding Model: Nebius has confirmed that approximately 60% of this massive spending plan is being funded through customer prepayments.
- The Customers: Tech giants like Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) and Meta (NASDAQ: META) are effectively paying Nebius upfront to build the data centers and install the GPUs they need.
This significantly de-risks the investment. The company's Annualized Run Rate (ARR) reached $1.2 billion in December 2025, and it has guided full-year 2026 revenue between $3 billion and $3.4 billion. By taking this position, BlackRock is essentially buying a stake in the physical railroads of the AI revolution, the servers and power supply, secured by contracts with the world's most creditworthy tech companies. It isn't betting on a startup finding customers; it is betting on a contractor fulfilling orders that are already signed. Three Nobel Prize Winners expose this once-in-a-generation wealth shift:
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Porter Stansberry exposes how the convergence of three immense forces is about to rewrite everything about the American way of life: how you work, save, invest… it's all about to change. Don't be left behind. Click here now. Strategic Foresight: The Agentic AI Pivot A key aspect of institutional investing is foresight, predicting where a company will be in six months rather than reacting to where it is today. BlackRock established this massive position before Nebius announced its latest strategic pivot, suggesting its analysts correctly modeled the company's evolution. On Feb. 10, 2026, Nebius announced the acquisition of Tavily for approximately $275 million. Tavily specializes in Agentic AI, which enables artificial intelligence models to search the web in real time to answer complex questions. This acquisition is critical because it moves Nebius up the value chain. If a company only rents out servers, it is selling a commodity. Customers will eventually leave for the cheapest option. However, by integrating Tavily’s search capabilities directly into its cloud, Nebius becomes a software platform rather than just a hardware rental service. This makes the product sticky, meaning customers are less likely to leave because the software is integral to their workflow. BlackRock’s entry suggests that its analysts valued Nebius as a future software platform rather than just a hardware utility, which justifies a higher valuation. The Geopolitical Discount Is Gone For much of the past two years, Nebius Group has been plagued by uncertainty about its separation from its former parent company, Yandex. Many investors avoided the stock due to geopolitical risk and the complexity of the divestment. BlackRock’s 39,000% position increase sends a clear message: that narrative is over. The smart money has done its due diligence and now views Nebius strictly as a Dutch-headquartered global AI player. While retail traders may fret over a single quarter's revenue miss, BlackRock is looking at the 2026 roadmap. It is betting on a company with $20 billion in infrastructure expansion, secured by the biggest names in tech, and evolving into a software platform. For individual investors, the disconnect between short-term price volatility and long-term institutional accumulation offers a clear signal: the builders of the AI age are still just getting started. Read this article online › Featured Stories 
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