Split from Russia’s Yandex, Nebius plans $1 billion AI infrastructure investment

LONDON : Amsterdam-based Nebius Group, which emerged from a deal to split the assets of Russian tech giant Yandex, plans to invest more than $1 billion in infrastructure in Europe for artificial intelligence (AI) by mid-2025, the company said on Wednesday. 
A Russian consortium in July finalised a $5.4 billion deal to buy Yandex’s Russia-based assets in a move that hived off foreign assets in the largest corporate exit since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, albeit at a big discount.
Freed from its ties to Russia, Nebius plans to join a drive to build infrastructure underpinning artificial intelligence, founder Arkady Volozh told Reuters in July.
Nebius Group includes data partner Toloka AI, education technology business TripleTen, and self-driving unit Avride. Nebius has also inherited Yandex’s Nasdaq listing, although trading remains suspended for now. 
Nebius said in a statement that it would spend the funds on expanding GPU (graphics processing unit) capacity, including on a new GPU cluster in Paris that will offer Nvidia GPUs, new-build data centres and expanding its data centre in Finland. 
The investments will enable Nebius to reach a total capacity of tens of thousands of GPUs, it said. Nebius has signed letters of intent to build two new data centres in Europe, it added, and has started work on expanding the Finland data centre.
(This story has been refiled to change the image)