Nebius, formerly known as Yandex but now focused on cloud infrastructure for AI (aka “AI computing”), is set to begin trading on the public markets once again. It has been more than two years since Nasdaq suspended trading due to economic sanctions. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
The Netherlands-based company is vying to become one of Europe’s leading players in the fast-growing “GPU-as-a-service” sector and is in a somewhat unique position. Although it’s a new business, being a public company means anyone can invest in it as an alternative to typical US hyperscalers like Alphabet or Microsoft.
Founded in 1997, Yandex is known to most people as the “Google of Russia,” making everything from search engines and advertising products to maps and self-driving cars. Yandex’s core markets have been domestic Russia and a few neighboring countries, but its parent company is a Dutch holding organization called Yandex NV, which listed on Nasdaq in 2011 and a secondary listing on the Moscow Exchange three years later.
Yandex NV was doing well as a public company, valued at $31 billion at the end of 2021, before the Russia-Ukraine conflict triggered a series of global sanctions against local companies and individuals. Yandex co-founder and CEO Arkady Volozh was forced to resign after the European Union placed him on a sanctions list, but he was removed from the list in March 2024, paving the way for his return as CEO of the next version of Yandex NV.
The next version is Nebius, and that business is based on a Finnish data center and AI cloud business called Nebius AI, one of Yandex NV’s few remaining assets outside of Russia. The new company officially emerged in July, outlining plans to become “Europe’s AI computing leader,” similar to CoreWeave. route.
Nasdaq said it would delist Yandex and several other Russian-affiliated companies in 2022, but Yandex appealed and Nasdaq agreed to keep them listed. But when it came to cutting ties with Russia, the deal continued to stop. With that relationship ending earlier this year and the sale of Russian assets bringing $2 billion to the bank, Volozh said at the time that he planned to keep Nebius a public company because it was an easier and cheaper way to access capital. It is a very capital intensive business.
“Our ambition is to build one of the world’s largest specialized AI infrastructure businesses,” Volozh said in a statement. “This requires access to technical expertise, graphics processing units and capital. This is what we have.”
Nevius said its Class A common stock will resume trading on Monday, October 21, 2024.
