Arkady Volozh, Former Yandex CEO, Launches New AI Infrastructure Venture

Russian tech guru Volozh to build a new AI powerhouse

After two and a half years of divorce from the Russian Yandex and a fight to lift personal sanctions, the founder and former CEO of "Russia's Google", , is starting over again. One of the longest-running corporate sagas in came to an end after - the Dutch company founded by Volozh - completed a deal to sell all its Russian assets to the Russian Yandex, separating the two and finalising Volozh exit from . The deal was fully completed on , and Volozh walked away with , money he will now pump back into the new venture, named , that has three main areas of interest: · Toloka AI, a data partner for all stages of generative AI development, from training to evaluation; · TripleTen, a leading edtech player in the US and other markets, re-skilling people for careers in tech; · Avride, one of the most experienced teams developing autonomous driving technology for self-driving cars and delivery robots. Volozh and the Yandex managers and developers who left after him expect to build a new business that will turn into the same unicorn that the Russian search became a quarter of a century ago. In his first interview since the deal closed with The Bell he said the divorce negotiations with Yandex were difficult and lasted almost two years. Moreover, Volozh was personally sanctioned by the EU, but those sanctions were eventually lifted after he became one of only two senior Russian businessmen to openly condemn what he called Putin's barbaric war with . When the deal was finally announced, Volozh wrote to his friends that he and the team were finally "free and with money" to start something new, says another interlocutor who saw the entrepreneur's appeal. "A new baby company is born," he wrote. Volozh received about from the sale of Yandex to to Russian buyers. Former finance minister and the architect of Russia's reforms confirmed this week he will stay on as the head of Yandex, which retains about 95% of the value of the whole group before its break up. Volozh says he will use part of the payout to buy out any investors that do not want to remain in , which retains its NASDAQ listing where trading in the stock is due to resume shortly. will be built on the fragments of several Yandex businesses. The main one, which gave the name to the entire holding, is the startup Nebius AI (ex-Yandex.Cloud). Now the company makes cloud solutions for AI and sells access to computing power to AI businesses. In addition, the holding included three more subsidiaries: the project for training neural networks Toloka AI (formerly Toloka), the edtech platform for training IT specialists in the TripleTen (formerly Yandex.Practicum) and the developer of unmanned driving technology Avride (formerly ). is controlled by the Volozh family trust : it now owns 15.5% of the economic share and 59.2% of the voting share. Another 11% of votes belong to directors, top managers and employees of the company, according to its website. Free float accounts for 78% of the economic share and 29.8% of the voting share. Of all Yandex's assets, "we chose those that were oriented toward international markets according to their business model," Volozh explained to The Bell. The original plan suggested that the company would build clouds in different countries, so that each region would have its own local service with local security. But things weren't going well for that business, and at the end of , launched the ChatGPT chatbot, setting off the boom in generative neural networks. "I have a feeling that AI is not hype, but serious and for a long time. About the same as it was with the Internet and search in the 90s: a big change that happens once in a generation," the businessman told The Bell. To accommodate this change, he said, the entire existing infrastructure will have to be rebuilt, "and Nebius will do this." The company's target clients are AI startups, which, following the market leaders, make either their own neural networks or applications based on them. They need a lot of computing power, but it's hard to get it from the biggest players in the market, like Microsoft Azure or AWS. According to Volozh, infrastructure is now the main bottleneck in the industry: everyone lacks data centres and electricity. "We will try to be the most important infrastructure for these startups. We ourselves came out of big tech, but now we're out in the cold, just like them. So we understand what they are dealing with," Volozh said. Nebius should become the main cash-generator for the company according to Volozh. And Volozh is back at the helm, taking charge of managing the company personally. He will become CEO of Nebius, and the current head of the company, , will take the position of commercial director. The company will be headquartered in , where it also maintains its main R&D centre. Nebius' biggest physical asset is a data centre in the Finnish city of Mäntsälä, which Yandex built back in 2014 and has been used to work with the foreign clients. In 2023, a new supercomputer ISEG (named in honour of Yandex co-founder , who died in 2013) was launched on its basis - the 16th most powerful computer in the world and, according to the company, the most powerful available commercial solution in the EU. After the divorce deal with Volozh, the data centre was part of the foreign assets transferred to . But now it will have to look for billions of dollars in investments to rent and build new data centres and purchase hardware, say two of The Bell's interlocutors in the holding. As part of the divorce, the company's employees were given the choice of staying on in and working for the Russian Yandex, or leaving. One of the reasons the deal took so long was that Volozh personally oversaw the relocation programme for those that chose to join the international company which took time to organise. Some 400 engineers with experience in AI development, creating cloud services and infrastructure for them moved from Yandex to the new company with many of them moving to . In just two and a half years after the start of the war, more than a thousand company employees who left decided to cross "to Volozh's side." In 2024, reported a staff of 1,300 employees, against the 21,000 Yandex employed before the start of the war.

Former Yandex chief Volozh returns with AI infrastructure venture after Russia split

July 16 (Reuters) - Freed from its ties to Russia, newly unveiled Dutch firm Nebius hopes to help lead the great drive to build the infrastructure underpinning artificial intelligence, founder Arkady Volozh, who previously set up Russian tech giant Yandex, told Reuters. A Russian consortium of buyers on Monday finalized a $5.4-billion cash and shares deal to acquire Yandex's Russia-based assets, which had been held through Nasdaq-listed Dutch parent Yandex NV (YNV), the largest corporate exit since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, albeit at a hefty discount. The deal marked the end of foreign ownership in Russia's leading technology firm, sharply raising the potential for Kremlin oversight of Russia's internet space. But it also released YNV - now rebranding to Nebius Group - from its Russian shackles, enabling it to pursue development elsewhere. Volozh, too, is unbound. Personal EU sanctions imposed in 2022 that led him to step down as Yandex CEO, were lifted in March. "It's good to be free, it's even better to be free with a couple of billion dollars to build something," Volozh told Reuters in his first public comments since an anti-war outburst threatened to derail the whole exit deal in August last year. What Volozh wants to build is infrastructure based on Nebius' cloud platform to service the rapidly growing global AI industry, including large-scale GPU (graphics processing unit) clusters, cloud platforms and tools and services for developers. "We hope Nebius will become one of the largest AI infrastructure companies in the world, certainly in Europe," Volozh said. "We understand that something serious is coming, which probably comes once in a generation, like the internet in the 1990s." Volozh would know, having launched Yandex in the dotcom boom, eventually listing on Nasdaq and at one point reaching a valuation as high as $30 billion. AI infrastructure bets have fueled a rally this year in the share prices of AI's big three players, Alphabet, Amazon.com and Microsoft. Nebius, which has inherited YNV's Nasdaq listing, hopes to return to trading soon following a long suspension over its Russian business, and thinks it could be the only publicly traded stock in AI infrastructure, outside Big Tech. Nebius, which owns a data center in Finland and designs hardware in-house with more than 1,000 engineers plucked from Russia as the war unfolded, hopes to break even in several months and then grow on the back of huge demand. "It's a supply market now, whatever you build is pre-ordered for months in advance," Volozh said. "If we can ride this wave it's going to be a good ride." Despite giving up its Russian business in a cut-price deal, Nebius has some free cash flow to play with, although part of the deal's proceeds will be used to buy back shares from the many investors still holding untradable Nasdaq stock. "Infrastructure is a very capital-intensive game," Volozh said. "We are looking at billions of dollars of investments, part will be financed from our funds, part from external funding (debt or equity)." The plan is to build hundreds of megawatts of capacity and triple the Finland data center's capacity over the next year, Volozh said. Nebius has good access to GPUs thanks to a long-term relationship with Nvidia and while the big players use Nvidia chips to build their own models, Nebius offers a platform to smaller players. Convincing investors of its prospects may be the next challenge, especially should trading on Nasdaq resume, which Volozh hopes could happen as soon as September. Mindful that Nebius is a completely different company to Yandex, Volozh said it was difficult to speak about any target share price and said there would be no hard feelings should investors choose to part ways. "If someone wants to leave the train now while we are still in the station, they are welcome to," he said. (Reporting by Alexander Marrow Editing by Christina Fincher)

Who is Arkady Volozh, former Yandex CEO, and what is his new AI venture?

July 16 (Reuters) - After almost two years of negotiations, a deal to split Russian tech giant Yandex's assets was completed this week, with most revenue-generating businesses staying in Russia and former CEO Arkady Volozh returning to lead a new AI-focused group abroad. Dutch firm Nebius, founded by Volozh and headquartered in Amsterdam, hopes to tap into the burgeoning need for infrastructure that underpins global AI ambitions, while Yandex will develop its existing services independently in Russia. Here's what we know about Volozh and the businesses: Once the darling of Russia's internet scene, Volozh co-founded Yandex in 1997 during the global dotcom boom, ultimately creating a company that would dominate Russia's online search market, list successfully on Nasdaq and at one point reach a market capitalisation of around $30 billion. When mathematician Volozh and geophysicist Ilya Segalovich launched Yandex, it had revenue of under $100,000. Volozh left Russia in 2014 and settled in Israel, recognising that some services, such as self-driving cars, could be better developed overseas. After 25 years as Yandex CEO, he stepped down in June 2022 after being sanctioned by the European Union over Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Those sanctions were lifted in March 2024. He faced criticism for not speaking out sooner and more forcefully against Russia's actions in Ukraine. In August 2023, he condemned the invasion as "barbaric" and described himself as a "Kazakhstan-born, Israeli tech entrepreneur". His criticism of the war earned him a personal name check from President Vladimir Putin, a greater threat to his security and the risk of the $5.4-billion split deal being derailed. On Tuesday, Volozh unveiled Nebius Group, which he hopes will become a leading European provider of infrastructure and services to AI developers worldwide. The company has more than 1,000 AI engineers with experience building AI infrastructure, as well as a data centre in Finland. The company plans to build hundreds of megawatts of capacity to service clients developing AI solutions. Additionally, the group includes data partner Toloka AI, education technology business TripleTen and self-driving unit Avride, based in Austin, Texas. For those businesses, Nebius may seek external investment. Nebius has total cash of around $2.5 billion and no debt, following the split from Yandex. It also takes on Yandex's Nasdaq listing and hopes trading will resume there later this year. "Over the next six to nine months we believe Nebius can achieve ARR (annual recurring revenue) of about $200 million," Nebius said. Yandex is now owned by a consortium of Russian investors, giving the Kremlin the potential for better-than-ever control over Russia's internet space. Yandex was bought by a consortium made up of senior Yandex Russian management, a fund controlled by oil major Lukoil and three other companies owned by businessmen Alexander Chachava, Pavel Prass and Alexander Ryazanov. The new owners acquired it at a huge discount, thanks to Moscow squeezing funds from exiting foreign companies. Often dubbed "Russia's Google", Yandex became the leading player in online advertising in Russia and developed other services, including ride-hailing, food delivery, e-commerce, cloud and AI ventures of its own. Some Yandex services are available in other markets, but how widely it can expand internationally remains to be seen, given Russia's pariah status in the West. Trading in Yandex in Russia under the new YDEX ticker will start on July 24. (Reporting by Alexander Marrow; Editing by Susan Fenton)

Yandex founder to build AI business in Europe after Russia exit

The co-founder of Russian tech group Yandex is launching an artificial intelligence venture in Europe mostly staffed with the company's former employees after its parent this week concluded a deal to exit the country. Arkady Volozh, one of only two prominent Russian businessmen to condemn Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, will head up Nebius Group, an AI infrastructure company and formerly Yandex's Nasdaq-listed, Netherlands-based parent company. The move marks Volozh's efforts to salvage some of Yandex's former international operations after Russia's war in Ukraine roiled the company and prompted thousands of its staff to flee the country. "It was obvious that not only [can we not] build anything out of Russian technology, but also the Russian technology business itself will continue by itself," Volozh said in an interview with the Financial Times. "When it all happened, half of Yandex's top management and 10 per cent of the developers found themselves outside Russia." He added: "We saw a new opportunity . . . Finally we are free to do something new." Volozh is leading 1,300 employees, mostly ex-Yandex staff, to build Nebius, whose core business is developing a cloud computing platform specifically designed to support the training and running of large-scale AI models by start-ups. Nebius is already working with Europe's best-known AI start-ups in France and Germany, according to Volozh, with 500 of its engineers focused on developing its specialised cloud infrastructure. "We have engineers who have built big tech infrastructure [at Yandex] . . . we know how to do it very efficiently," he said. "We know how to interconnect into supercomputers . . . and we know how to build really big clusters." The $5.4bn sale of Yandex's core Russian assets, the largest western corporate departure from the country during the conflict, came after a protracted two-year negotiation that required President Vladimir Putin's personal approval over an asset the Kremlin considers strategically important. The company hammered out the deal with the help of Alexei Kudrin, a former finance minister with long-standing ties to Putin, whom it enlisted to negotiate with Sergei Kirienko, the Kremlin's domestic policy chief. The war in Ukraine dashed Volozh's ambitions to make Yandex, which had a market capitalisation of $30bn at its peak, a global internet giant, prompted key technology partners to distance themselves from the company, and led Nasdaq to suspend trading in its shares. Yandex's core Russian business, which accounted for 95 per cent of the group's revenue, assets and employees, is now owned by a consortium including members of the company's management and several Kremlin-approved investors. The EU imposed sanctions on Volozh in 2022 over what it described as Yandex's complicity in the war. Volozh resigned as chief executive, transferred the voting rights from his controlling stake to the board, and released a statement a year later saying the invasion "is barbaric, and I am categorically against it". He has reassumed control of voting rights in Nebius following the split with Yandex. The EU agreed this year not to renew sanctions against Volozh, making him the first person to be removed from its list after speaking out against the war. "I'm still in the same place . . . I was there from the beginning," Volozh said when asked about his anti-war statement. "A lot of people have changed their lives. And they just didn't want to stay, for a reason," he said. "It's not because they were running from the army . . . they left because they didn't want this to be done in their name. They didn't want to stay with that." Volozh, who moved to Israel in 2014 and is an Israeli citizen, hopes the venture will allow Nebius to harness the former Yandex employees' engineering talent without facing the severe restrictions on any Russian company seeking to do business in the west. "We have zero connection, which means zero," he said. "There is no byte or bit going between us and our previous company. It's a new company, new infrastructure, new corporate entity." The Nasdaq-listed company has built up clusters of tens of thousands of Nvidia chips in its existing data centre in Finland, which it plans to triple in size, in an effort to take on big cloud providers including Microsoft, Amazon and Google in the area of AI applications. Nebius is touting a "strong long-term relationship" with leading AI chipmaker Nvidia to help it procure powerful new processors even amid soaring demand. Its data centre is home to a supercomputer it says is the most powerful in Europe. "It's in [Nvidia's] interest to diversify their client base; they're interested in growing guys like us," Volozh said. "We've had a working relationship with them for years. They know and trust us." Nebius has commissioned an audit from a Big Four auditor to certify it no longer has any ties to Russia, he added. "You own basically the same stock, but it's a different company [that has] completely pivoted. We cannot offer you exposure to the Russian IT ecosystem any more, but probably we can provide you with something much more interesting," he said. "We used to be big tech, it meant you have . . . a very big ecosystem around you, lots of users generating lots of data. This is a different world," Volozh said. "Then we appeared outside with nothing, like any other start-up . . . this was a new, refreshing feeling." Nebius has retained three other internationally focused businesses from Yandex in the split, focusing on data annotation and generation, education and self-driving cars, as well as the data centre in Finland and some intellectual property licences. Developers were forced to reinvent large aspects of the projects on the fly, Volozh said, rushing to keep up with rapid AI-driven technological change while simultaneously grappling with the split from Yandex. "It was a perfect storm," Volozh said. "They were moving people outside Russia and trying to rebuild the business and, in parallel, the business model has changed." The rebranded Nebius holds $2.5bn in cash following the sale of Yandex's Russian business and has no debt, allowing the company to invest some of it in expanding the business and return "a substantial proportion" to shareholders. Nebius will continue to report to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, plans to launch a new board and hopes it can resume trading on the Nasdaq "in due course", with a view to attracting more funding. "We have an opportunity to build something bigger than there was," Volozh said. "The scale of what we are building assumes there will be multibillion-dollar investments in the future through debt, through equity. What we have now . . . gives us a scale which I think doesn't exist in Europe, outside of the big tech sector."

Former Yandex chief Volozh returns with AI infrastructure venture after Russia split

The deal marked the end of foreign ownership in Russia's leading technology firm, sharply raising the potential for Kremlin oversight of Russia's internet space. But it also released YNV - now rebranding to Nebius Group - from its Russian shackles, enabling it to pursue development elsewhere. Volozh, too, is unbound. Personal EU sanctions imposed in 2022 that led him to step down as Yandex CEO, were lifted in March. "It's good to be free, it's even better to be free with a couple of billion dollars to build something," Volozh told Reuters in his first public comments since an anti-war outburst threatened to derail the whole exit deal in August last year. What Volozh wants to build is infrastructure based on Nebius' cloud platform to service the rapidly growing global AI industry, including large-scale GPU (graphics processing unit) clusters, cloud platforms and tools and services for developers. "We hope Nebius will become one of the largest AI infrastructure companies in the world, certainly in Europe," Volozh said. "We understand that something serious is coming, which probably comes once in a generation, like the internet in the 1990s." Volozh would know, having launched Yandex in the dotcom boom, eventually listing on Nasdaq and at one point reaching a valuation as high as $30 billion. AI infrastructure bets have fuelled a rally this year in the share prices of AI's big three players, Alphabet, Amazon.com and Microsoft. Nebius, which has inherited YNV's Nasdaq listing, hopes to return to trading soon following a long suspension over its Russian business, and thinks it could be the only publicly traded stock in AI infrastructure, outside Big Tech. Nebius, which owns a data centre in Finland and designs hardware in-house with more than 1,000 engineers plucked from Russia as the war unfolded, hopes to break even in several months and then grow on the back of huge demand. "It's a supply market now, whatever you build is pre-ordered for months in advance," Volozh said. "If we can ride this wave it's going to be a good ride." Despite giving up its Russian business in a cut-price deal, Nebius has some free cash flow to play with, although part of the deal's proceeds will be used to buy back shares from the many investors still holding untradable Nasdaq stock. "Infrastructure is a very capital-intensive game," Volozh said. "We are looking at billions of dollars of investments, part will be financed from our funds, part from external funding (debt or equity)." The plan is to build hundreds of megawatts of capacity and triple the Finland data centre's capacity over the next year, Volozh said. Nebius has good access to GPUs thanks to a long-term relationship with Nvidia and while the big players use Nvidia chips to build their own models, Nebius offers a platform to smaller players. Convincing investors of its prospects may be the next challenge, especially should trading on Nasdaq resume, which Volozh hopes could happen as soon as September. Mindful that Nebius is a completely different company to Yandex, Volozh said it was difficult to speak about any target share price and said there would be no hard feelings should investors choose to part ways. "If someone wants to leave the train now while we are still in the station, they are welcome to," he said. (Reporting by Alexander Marrow; Editing by Christina Fincher)

Factbox-Who is Arkady Volozh, former Yandex CEO, and what is his new AI venture?

Once the darling of Russia's internet scene, Volozh co-founded Yandex in 1997 during the global dotcom boom, ultimately creating a company that would dominate Russia's online search market, list successfully on Nasdaq and at one point reach a market capitalisation of around $30 billion. When mathematician Volozh and geophysicist Ilya Segalovich launched Yandex, it had revenue of under $100,000. Volozh left Russia in 2014 and settled in Israel, recognising that some services, such as self-driving cars, could be better developed overseas. After 25 years as Yandex CEO, he stepped down in June 2022 after being sanctioned by the European Union over Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Those sanctions were lifted in March 2024. He faced criticism for not speaking out sooner and more forcefully against Russia's actions in Ukraine. In August 2023, he condemned the invasion as "barbaric" and described himself as a "Kazakhstan-born, Israeli tech entrepreneur". His criticism of the war earned him a personal name check from President Vladimir Putin, a greater threat to his security and the risk of the $5.4-billion split deal being derailed. On Tuesday, Volozh unveiled Nebius Group, which he hopes will become a leading European provider of infrastructure and services to AI developers worldwide. The company has more than 1,000 AI engineers with experience building AI infrastructure, as well as a data centre in Finland. The company plans to build hundreds of megawatts of capacity to service clients developing AI solutions. Additionally, the group includes data partner Toloka AI, education technology business TripleTen and self-driving unit Avride, based in Austin, Texas. For those businesses, Nebius may seek external investment. Nebius has total cash of around $2.5 billion and no debt, following the split from Yandex. It also takes on Yandex's Nasdaq listing and hopes trading will resume there later this year. "Over the next six to nine months we believe Nebius can achieve ARR (annual recurring revenue) of about $200 million," Nebius said. Yandex is now owned by a consortium of Russian investors, giving the Kremlin the potential for better-than-ever control over Russia's internet space. Yandex was bought by a consortium made up of senior Yandex Russian management, a fund controlled by oil major Lukoil and three other companies owned by businessmen Alexander Chachava, Pavel Prass and Alexander Ryazanov. The new owners acquired it at a huge discount, thanks to Moscow squeezing funds from exiting foreign companies. Often dubbed "Russia's Google", Yandex became the leading player in online advertising in Russia and developed other services, including ride-hailing, food delivery, e-commerce, cloud and AI ventures of its own. Some Yandex services are available in other markets, but how widely it can expand internationally remains to be seen, given Russia's pariah status in the West. Trading in Yandex in Russia under the new YDEX ticker will start on July 24. (Reporting by Alexander Marrow; Editing by Susan Fenton)

Factbox-Who Is Arkady Volozh, Former Yandex CEO, and What Is His New AI Venture?

(Reuters) - After almost two years of negotiations, a deal to split Russian tech giant Yandex's assets was completed this week, with most revenue-generating businesses staying in Russia and former CEO Arkady Volozh returning to lead a new AI-focused group abroad. Dutch firm Nebius, founded by Volozh and headquartered in Amsterdam, hopes to tap into the burgeoning need for infrastructure that underpins global AI ambitions, while Yandex will develop its existing services independently in Russia. Here's what we know about Volozh and the businesses: ARKADY VOLOZH Once the darling of Russia's internet scene, Volozh co-founded Yandex in 1997 during the global dotcom boom, ultimately creating a company that would dominate Russia's online search market, list successfully on Nasdaq and at one point reach a market capitalisation of around $30 billion. When mathematician Volozh and geophysicist Ilya Segalovich launched Yandex, it had revenue of under $100,000. Volozh left Russia in 2014 and settled in Israel, recognising that some services, such as self-driving cars, could be better developed overseas. After 25 years as Yandex CEO, he stepped down in June 2022 after being sanctioned by the European Union over Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Those sanctions were lifted in March 2024. He faced criticism for not speaking out sooner and more forcefully against Russia's actions in Ukraine. In August 2023, he condemned the invasion as "barbaric" and described himself as a "Kazakhstan-born, Israeli tech entrepreneur". His criticism of the war earned him a personal name check from President Vladimir Putin, a greater threat to his security and the risk of the $5.4-billion split deal being derailed. NEBIUS GROUP On Tuesday, Volozh unveiled Nebius Group, which he hopes will become a leading European provider of infrastructure and services to AI developers worldwide. The company has more than 1,000 AI engineers with experience building AI infrastructure, as well as a data centre in Finland. The company plans to build hundreds of megawatts of capacity to service clients developing AI solutions. Additionally, the group includes data partner Toloka AI, education technology business TripleTen and self-driving unit Avride, based in Austin, Texas. For those businesses, Nebius may seek external investment. Nebius has total cash of around $2.5 billion and no debt, following the split from Yandex. It also takes on Yandex's Nasdaq listing and hopes trading will resume there later this year. "Over the next six to nine months we believe Nebius can achieve ARR (annual recurring revenue) of about $200 million," Nebius said. YANDEX IN RUSSIA Yandex is now owned by a consortium of Russian investors, giving the Kremlin the potential for better-than-ever control over Russia's internet space. Yandex was bought by a consortium made up of senior Yandex Russian management, a fund controlled by oil major Lukoil and three other companies owned by businessmen Alexander Chachava, Pavel Prass and Alexander Ryazanov. The new owners acquired it at a huge discount, thanks to Moscow squeezing funds from exiting foreign companies. Often dubbed "Russia's Google", Yandex became the leading player in online advertising in Russia and developed other services, including ride-hailing, food delivery, e-commerce, cloud and AI ventures of its own. Some Yandex services are available in other markets, but how widely it can expand internationally remains to be seen, given Russia's pariah status in the West. Trading in Yandex in Russia under the new YDEX ticker will start on July 24. (Reporting by Alexander Marrow; Editing by Susan Fenton)

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Arkady Volozh is building an AI cloud infrastructure for developers Yandex founder Arkady Volozh is building a cloud service platform for developers to train artificial intelligence models. Named Nebius Group, the company says its aim is to become a European global leader in AI infrastructure. The launch follows news from yesterday that Yandex had successfully sold its Russian assets in a $5.4bn deal, in what constitutes the largest corporate exit from the country since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine over two years ago. Yandex was a rare Russian tech success story. The most talented developers in the country came together to build a company that went on to give tech giants such as Google a run for their money. Volozh says his new venture, which will employ 1,300 people, will house mostly former Yandex employees. Indeed, the founder described the team of engineers -- over 1,000 -- as the company's "greatest asset." "Europe's challenge in the global AI race is competing for talent. This is what we have -- very smart and talented people, capable of creating essential innovative technologies," Volozh said in a statement. Nebius says it will build "technology for technologists," or T2T. The new business' core product will be an AI-centric cloud platform for intense AI workloads. This will incorporate a network of large GPU clusters and is intended to "give AI developers the compute, storage, managed services, and tools they need to successfully train, develop, and run their models." Furthermore, Nebius Group will build three other businesses under individual brands. One will focus on data for generative AI. The other is an edtech business in the US reskilling people to work in tech. The third will develop self-driving technology for cars and delivery robots. The company says its vision will require "substantial capital investments," including a variety of funding sources. Following the divestment from Russia, the company says it has $2.5bn in total cash, and no debt. When I was living in Moscow in the 2010s, everybody used Yandex for search, maps, news, and its ride-hailing taxi service. At the end of 2020, Yandex introduced autonomous delivery robots. In March 2021, the company also launched its own payment service, Yandex Pay. In February 2022, the Kremlin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and changed the fate of Yandex and its over 20,000 employees (along with generations of Ukrainians). The EU initially included the Yandex co-founder and CEO in its list of sanctioned Russian businessmen. However, regulators removed him from the list in March this year, after he stepped down from his role as chief executive. It should be noted that Arkady Volozh is one of only a few prominent Russian businessmen who has condemned the war. "I am horrified about the fate of people in Ukraine -- many of them my personal friends and relatives -- whose houses are being bombed every day," the tech billionaire said in a statement in August last year, having previously removed almost all mentions of Russia from his personal bio. However, one should also not ignore the fact that Yandex was for a long time tied to Russia's state-owned Sberbank -- or that it appears to collaborate closely with Russia's internet surveillance body to quell political dissent and bury factual information about the war. Yandex and Sberbank had a partnership that lasted over 10 years and included a golden share for the bank which allowed it to, among other things, veto all decisions for the company. When the two parted ways after increasingly souring relations, Sberbank agreed to sell the golden share to Yandex. However, in 2019, Yandex transferred the golden share to an NGO with public participation control in order to alleviate Kremlin fears that the company could fall under "foreign influence" -- and investor concern that the state could potentially seize it to stop the aforementioned from happening. There is no such thing as large-scale business in Russia without the authorities' say-so. Brussels might be somewhat tedious and bureaucratic in its regulatory approach, but no one needs to fear having their assets seized on fake charges and thrown into prison for expressing criticism of the Commission's policies. Let's see what Volozh and 1,000 Yandex AI engineers can build in Europe.

The Architect of Russia's Google Is Back

Yandex co-founder Arkady Volozh fought off sanctions and kicked anti-war squatters out of his Amsterdam townhouse. Now he is ready to reveal his new AI company in the Netherlands. But can Europe forget his past? The billionaire Arkady Volozh, known as the architect of "Russia's Google," valued at $30 billion at its peak, has long had an apolitical public persona. "I don't have friction with the state," Volozh told WIRED in 2017. "Just like I don't have friction with the weather. What happens if it's raining? I need to build a service to avoid the rain." Still, Volozh couldn't avoid the rain. Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, he was targeted by EU sanctions personally and forced to step down from Yandex, the internet giant he built with the late Ilya Segalovich. Today the tech billionaire is announcing his comeback as CEO of a new European AI company. The Nebius Group is technically a reinvention of Russian internet giant Yandex. Volozh and his team have spent the past two years in complex negotiations with the Kremlin, selling off parts of the business still based in Russia, including the search engine. For the famed Russian internet giant, Yandex's Dutch parent company (Yandex NV) was forced to accept a cut-down price of just $5 billion, under Russian rules for western firms trying to leave the country. Out of that deal, however, Volozh's team were able to salvage parts of Yandex that were already based abroad, including four business units focused on AI. These are the assets that will be rebranded and turned into what Volozh hopes will become one of the leading AI infrastructure companies in the world. "This life is different," Volozh says, of his new role as CEO of Nebius. "It feels very good to be free and to start something new." On Monday, sitting in an office in Amsterdam, Volozh doesn't want to talk politics. He wants to focus on his brand-new project. The main part of Nebius' business will be its cloud division and Volozh wants to offer AI developers access to big tech-style infrastructure without the conflicting interest of the US giants that are building their own models on the side. "We are building infrastructure for the people who build the models to build AI," says Volozh, explaining the plan behind Nebius. Nebius owns one data center in Finland -- where it plans to triple capacity this year -- and is building several others from scratch with "hundreds of megawatts capacity each," Volozh says, emphasizing the company already has billions in capital and plans to raise more. Until Nebius' new data centers are built -- primarily in Europe -- the company is renting space in tens of data centers that already exist. "With rented capacity, [we] will exceed 100 megawatts," he says. "People are understanding more and more that the next main bottleneck is the infrastructure itself -- it's the data centers, the energy -- this is one of the key chokepoints for this industry." Volozh as CEO is not the only similarity between Yandex and Nebius. Out of the 1,300 people working for the new company now in Europe, "many of them" used to work at Yandex in Russia, Volozh says. He also plans to replicate the same formula that made Yandex such a success: Nebius has units dedicated to self-driving, data labeling, and education tech. "We hope that this AI cloud [business] will be our main revenue source for the beginning and it will give us an opportunity to grow other things," Volozh explains.

Russian tech firm Yandex's ex-international businesses launch as Nebius Group

July 16 (Reuters) - The international businesses of Russian technology giant Yandex, spun off in a $5.4-billion deal that was finalised this week, launched on Tuesday as Nebius Group, headquartered in Amsterdam and led by former Yandex CEO Arkady Volozh. Volozh, who co-founded Yandex in the 1990s dotcom boom, spoke to Reuters as he returned to public life following an anti-war outburst that could have derailed the Yandex split and after EU sanctions against him were lifted in March. Nebius' core business is an AI-centric cloud platform built for intensive AI workloads and hopes to become a leading European provider of infrastructure and services to AI developers worldwide, it said. Volozh said Nebius' expertise was being able to address fundamental bottlenecks in AI, describing the business model as "T2T", or "technology for technologists". (Reporting by Alexander Marrow; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)