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

(Reuters) – The international businesses of Russian technology giant Yandex (NASDAQ:), 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”.