The Architect of Russia's Google Is Back

The billionaire Arkady Volozh, known arsenic the designer of “Russia’s Google,” valued astatine $30 cardinal astatine its peak, has agelong had an apolitical nationalist persona. “I don’t person friction with the state,” Volozh told WIRED successful 2017. “Just similar I don't person friction with the weather. What happens if it’s raining? I request to physique a work to debar the rain.”

Still, Volozh couldn’t debar the rain. Following Russia’s penetration of Ukraine, helium was targeted by EU sanctions personally and forced to measurement down from Yandex, the net elephantine helium built with the precocious Ilya Segalovich. Today the tech billionaire is announcing his comeback arsenic CEO of a caller European AI company. The Nebius Group is technically a reinvention of Russian net elephantine Yandex. Volozh and his squad person spent the past 2 years successful analyzable negotiations with the Kremlin, selling disconnected parts of the concern inactive based successful Russia, including the hunt engine.

For the famed Russian net giant, Yandex’s Dutch genitor institution (Yandex NV) was forced to judge a cut-down terms of conscionable $5 billion, nether Russian rules for occidental firms trying to permission the country. Out of that deal, however, Volozh’s squad were capable to salvage parts of Yandex that were already based abroad, including 4 concern units focused connected AI. These are the assets that volition beryllium rebranded and turned into what Volozh hopes volition go 1 of the starring AI infrastructure companies successful the world.

“This beingness is different,” Volozh says, of his caller relation arsenic CEO of Nebius. “It feels precise bully to beryllium escaped and to commencement thing new.”

On Monday, sitting successful an bureau successful Amsterdam, Volozh doesn’t privation to speech politics. He wants to absorption connected his brand-new project. The main portion of Nebius’ concern volition beryllium its unreality part and Volozh wants to connection AI developers entree to large tech-style infrastructure without the conflicting involvement of the US giants that are gathering their ain models connected the side. “We are gathering infrastructure for the radical who physique the models to physique AI,” says Volozh, explaining the program down Nebius.

Nebius owns 1 information halfway successful Finland—where it plans to triple capableness this year—and is gathering respective others from scratch with “hundreds of megawatts capableness each,” Volozh says, emphasizing the institution already has billions successful superior and plans to rise more.

Until Nebius’ caller information centers are built—primarily successful Europe—the institution is renting abstraction successful tens of information centers that already exist. “With rented capacity, [we] volition transcend 100 megawatts,” helium says. “People are knowing much and much that the adjacent main bottleneck is the infrastructure itself—it’s the information centers, the energy—this is 1 of the cardinal chokepoints for this industry."

Volozh arsenic CEO is not the lone similarity betwixt Yandex and Nebius. Out of the 1,300 radical moving for the caller institution present successful Europe, “many of them” utilized to enactment astatine Yandex successful Russia, Volozh says. He besides plans to replicate the aforesaid look that made Yandex specified a success: Nebius has units dedicated to self-driving, information labeling, and acquisition tech. “We anticipation that this AI unreality [business] volition beryllium our main gross root for the opening and it volition springiness america an accidental to turn different things,” Volozh explains.