Nebius’s Arkady Volozh on What it Takes to Build Infrastructure Needed for the AI Era

Nebius is unique among companies that call themselves startups. As it currently exists, is less than a year old; it’s also listed on NASDAQ as a publicly traded company with billions in cash on the balance sheet. Its hundreds of engineers have worked together for years building out digital infrastructure, but have been rapidly redeployed to focus on what founder Arkady Volozh has determined is the next generational opportunity: the cloud infrastructure needed to drive the AI transformation. 

Accel’s Matt Weigand sat down with CEO Arkady Volozh to talk about the journey to Nebius and what’s to come for the prolific founder. Arkady’s story is remarkable: he spent nearly three decades building his former company Yandex into the “Google of Russia” – valued at $30 billion at its peak – before divesting the company’s Russian assets and pivoting the remaining company into AI infrastructure. On this episode of Spotlight On, he also shares lessons on building teams, infrastructure, and across markets relevant for leaders at all stages. 

0:00 – The journey from Yandex to Nebius 

9:27  – How Arkady pivoted people, operations, and capital into the AI infrastructure market 

12:30 – Nebius’s surprise NASDAQ re-listing 

14:20 – The secret to building infrastructure: technology and capital 

16:28 – How Nebius is prioritizing markets 

19:17 – Why Arkady starts with the team rather than product 

21:40 – Nebius’s product portfolio strategy

28:36 – The best thing Arkady’s read recently to understand where AI is going