Nebius

As of 2024, the company plans to become the largest commercial supplier of AI infrastructure in Europe.

History

2025: Shares fall 40%

Shares of the AI company Nebius, formed from the former Yandex N.V. and headed by Arkady Volozh, fell in price by almost 40% during trading on the Nasdaq exchange on January 27, 2025. Such a sharp decline is due to the market's reaction to the successes of the Chinese startup DeepSeek, the developer of the powerful open-source artificial intelligence model DeepSeek V3, which surpasses most open and closed counterparts, including ChatGPT.

It is reported that Nebius shares fell 38.59% to $25.6. Thus, Volozh's company lost more than a third of its market value in a day. Nebius quotes collapsed due to an active sale of shares in AI companies. Investors around the world were getting rid of such securities amid DeepSeek's achievements.

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Фото: Bloomberg

Chinese chatbot DeepSeek is said to have been more efficient and cheaper than many peers. It is available for free and runs on chips of less power than the solutions of competitors. As a result, some industry participants began to question the feasibility of investing in leading AI companies, which entailed a sharp decline in the value of their shares.

Nebius implements various AI projects. This is, in particular, a cloud that allows you to manage the entire cycle of machine learning, as well as the Nebius AI Studio inference service. In November 2024, Nebius announced the deployment of its first computing AI cluster in the United States: the system uses the Patmos data center in Kansas City (Missouri). Volozh also has computing platforms in France and Finland: all of these facilities use GPU-based AI accelerators. By mid-2025, Nebius plans to invest more than $1 billion in AI infrastructure in Europe.^[1]

2024: Yandex NV renamed Nebius Group. Arkady Volozh returns to the management of the company

Yandex NV founder Arkady Volozh returned to management of a significantly smaller version of the company he created and which sold the leading Russian search engine Yandex.

Yandex NV completed the sale of its Russian business, which accounted for most of its revenue. After shareholder approval, the company will be renamed the Nebius Group and focus on developing its own projects.

2023: Ban on the purchase of Tecnologia Intelligente due to connection with Yandex

The Italian authorities did not allow the Dutch cloud services developer Nebius from the Netherlands to buy the Italian company Tecnologia Intelligente due to the possible connection of the buyer with Yandex. The deal was vetoed by Italian Prime Minister George Meloni on March 16, 2023, and a few days later - on March 22 - the Italian Senate unveiled this decision.

Two Italian government officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters the deal was rejected because of suspicions that Nebius' activities were being funded by Yandex. Yandex confirmed that Nebius is part of the Dutch holding Yandex N.V., but declined to comment further.

Italian Prime Minister George Meloni

Nebius reported that they planned to create a research and development center in Italy with the involvement of the best technical specialists from Russia. They confirmed that the holding is in the process of selling its Russian business, but called the process slow.

By blocking the deal, the Meloni government used special powers for the first time - the so-called "golden power" regulation to block unwanted agreements in industries deemed strategically important. This mechanism was introduced in 2012, the Italian authorities resorted to it nine times, in six of which they stopped deals related to China.

Nebius developer Danila Stan told Reuters that as part of the deal with Tecnologia Intelligente, the company wanted to build a research and development center in Italy to attract the best technical specialists from Russia and other countries.

Our Dutch holding is in the process of selling its Russian business - unfortunately, this is not an imminent process. Hopefully when it's completed, we can focus again on technology, not visas, "he said.[2]

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