One of 2026's biggest artificial-intelligence winners isn't a chipmaker or a chatbot company — it's Nebius, a stock that has climbed roughly 170% this year with Nvidia among its backers.
The story is being driven by a widely syndicated Motley Fool analysis, which ran under the headline "Nvidia Is a Massive Investor in the Genius Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stock Up 170% This Year" and was picked up by outlets including AOL.com and MSN.
The piece makes a point that often gets lost in coverage of the AI boom: according to The Motley Fool, Nvidia "doesn't just make GPUs and the various supporting equipment for these computing units. It's also an active investor." When the company finds a business it likes, the analysis notes, it isn't shy about putting money in.
Nebius is one of those bets. The Motley Fool's summary of the stock is blunt — "Nebius has crushed it so far in 2026, but this is just the beginning" — framing the 170% run-up as an early stage rather than a peak.
A note on what these sources do and don't establish: the available items describe the size of the gain and Nvidia's position as an investor, but they don't specify the dollar amount of Nvidia's stake, the size of its ownership position, or when the investment was made. Readers should treat the bullish outlook as one publication's opinion, not a forecast.
Why it matters: Nvidia's investments function as a signal about which companies it expects to matter in AI infrastructure, and when a chip supplier takes equity stakes in the customers buying its hardware, ordinary investors are left to judge how much of a stock's run reflects genuine demand versus the halo of the industry's most powerful player.