Arkady Volozh in the future headquarters of Nebius.
Photographer: Julia Gunther for Bloomberg Businessweek
He Built Russia’s Biggest Tech Company. Now He’s Starting Over—Without Putin
The co-founder of internet company Yandex went into exile after the war began.
(This story originally ran on Jan. 10. On Monday, Microsoft announced a deal with Nebius that could be worth as much as $19.4 billion, sending the Dutch company’s shares soaring. )
It’s noon, and Arkady Volozh is ready to christen the first proper headquarters of his new company, Nebius Group NV. Six days before Christmas, the mood is festive, with pizza and cans of Heineken carted out for the 200 or so employees gathered in the empty building, a short drive from Amsterdam’s main airport. “It’s not an office,” Volozh, 60, tells his staff. “It will be a home or a club.” The chief executive officer isn’t a natural pep talker. He seems more at ease milling about the room after he relinquishes the microphone. A deputy takes over to review corporate values with the aid of a PowerPoint deck.
There’s no mention that, 22 months ago, Volozh and about half of the people at the office worked for Yandex, Russia’s biggest technology company. Starting as a search engine—more widely used in the country than Google—it added e-commerce, ride-hailing, music streaming and much more. When Vladimir Putin visited Yandex’s Moscow office for its 20th anniversary, in 2017, Volozh showed off the company’s self-driving car. By its peak, Yandex was worth $30 billion.