Nebius: From Russian Internet Giant to AI Infrastructure Startup

NebiusDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →’ emergence as a standalone AI-infrastructure company is rooted in the long corporate evolution of Yandex, the Russian internet group founded in 1997.

As Yandex grew, it set up a Dutch holding company, Yandex N.V., in 2007 to manage its expanding operations and give it access to international investors. Yandex N.V. then listed on Nasdaq in 2011, becoming one of Europe’s most prominent tech floats

The company’s trajectory changed after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Yandex N.V., a Western-registered firm still tied to a major Russian business, came under geopolitical and regulatory pressure.

Nasdaq suspended trading of its shares, and the company began exploring a full separation of its Russian and non-Russian businesses. During this period, co-founder Arkady VolozhDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → publicly condemned the invasion, reinforcing the necessity of a full split.

In 2024, Yandex N.V. sold all of its Russia-based businesses to a domestic investor consortium for $5.4 billion at roughly a 50% regulatory discount to its implied market value, reflecting Russia’s mandatory pricing rules for divestments by ‘unfriendly’ foreign owners.

Those operations — including search, advertising and mobility — now continue independently as Yandex.  What remained in the Dutch entity were its data-centre infrastructure, engineering teams and several international units.

With the Russian divestment completed, Yandex N.V. rebranded as Nebius Group and fully reoriented its strategy toward AI compute and cloud infrastructure. Nasdaq then reinstated trading, marking Nebius’ entry into public markets as a fundamentally reconstituted company.

Today, Nebius positions itself as a European-based AI-infrastructure provider, developing GPU clusters and high-performance computing services for global clients.

While it carries the legal continuity of the former Yandex N.V., its business is entirely distinct from the Russian company that originated three decades ago. Its path reflects a rare combination of geopolitical upheaval, corporate restructuring and strategic reinvention, producing a new public company built around the rising demand for AI compute.

Source:


TechCrunch
Bloomberg
Yandex

J.V.