Yandex founder Arkady Volozh signed a $27 billion contract with Mark Zuckerberg's Meta*.
The company of Yandex founder and billionaire Arkady Volozh, who previously renounced his Russian citizenship, has signed a contract with Mark Zuckerberg's holding company. Nebius and Meta* will invest a combined $27 billion in artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure over the next five years, according to a statement from Nebius.
"For the company [Volozha], this is a historic record, cementing its status as one of the world's largest AI infrastructure providers," the Telegram channel "Billions" commented on the deal.
The market has already reacted to the news. Nebius shares immediately rose 15%. Volozh's company had previously signed similar contracts with Microsoft and Google worth approximately $17.4 billion.
In late February, it was announced that 62-year-old Volozh (worth $1.2 billion according to Forbes) had renounced his Russian citizenship to focus on developing his business abroad. However, the businessman had actually renounced his citizenship several years earlier, calling himself "an Israeli entrepreneur born in Kazakhstan." The billionaire is known to hold an Israeli passport, where he has lived for over 10 years.
Volozh founded Yandex in 2000 together with Ilya Segalovich (who died in 2013 after a long battle with stomach cancer). In 2022, after the start of the SVO, Arkady was placed on the EU sanctions list and soon resigned as the company's CEO, as well as from all management positions in the group's international subsidiaries.
In the summer of 2023, Volozh issued an official statement criticizing the actions of the Russian authorities and acknowledging that he also bore "a share of responsibility" for what had happened. A few days later, the businessman asked the European Union to lift sanctions against him.
Nebius Group NV is the new name of Yandex's former parent company, the Dutch-based Yandex NV. Following the completion of the asset split in 2024, the company completely severed ties with Russian businesses and focused on building an international AI infrastructure.