Volozh, CEO of Nebius and founder of Yandex, renounced Russian citizenship

Arkady Volozh, CEO of cloud provider Nebius Group and founder of Yandex, has renounced his Russian citizenship, Bloomberg reports, citing a source in the billionaire's entourage. The source said that Volozh received confirmation this week that he is no longer a Russian citizen.

Kazakh-born Volozh sold his stake in Yandex almost two years ago, and now intends to fully focus on the development of his Dutch neoblack company Nebius Group, Bloomberg writes.

A Nebius spokesman declined to comment.

Volozh, who holds an Israeli passport and has lived in Israel for more than a decade, turned Yandex into a technology giant that dominates the Russian search market and offers services from cabs to e-commerce. In 2022, the company came under severe pressure: trading of Yandex shares on Nasdaq was suspended. In June of the same year, Volozh stepped down as CEO of the company.

In 2024, Yandex NV, the Dutch holding company that owns Yandex, split the business and sold the Russian assets to a group of investors in Russia for $5.2 billion. Yandex NV was then renamed Nebius Group NV. Volozh tried to start anew, using Yandex's international assets as the basis for the new business, Bloomberg writes.

In October 2024, the Dutch holding company re-listed on Nasdaq, and Volozh refocused the business on building and operating data centers for artificial intelligence. Nebius has since entered into agreements with Meta Platforms and Microsoft to provide dedicated AI infrastructure. Nebius' market capitalization has nearly tripled over the past year to about $25 billion. Volozh's family controls about 13% of the company.

Arkady Volozh's fortune is estimated at $3.3 billion, according to Bloomberg's Billionaires Index.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor