Ahad, 24 November 2024

The curious case of AI startup Nebius

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Sunday, November 24, 2024

Image Credits: Nebius

A relatively unknown cloud infrastructure company, Nebius, recently debuted on the Nasdaq. You might be forgiven for wondering: Who?

As Paul Sawers explains, Nebius has actually been public for 13 years, operating for most of that time under the name Yandex N.V. But after Russia began its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the company faced sanctions and a Nasdaq delisting.

Yandex N.V. ultimately offloaded all its Russian assets, and the remaining grab bag of infrastructure and business units was renamed Nebius. The company's core business involves selling graphical processing units (GPUs) "as a service," which could mean it's well-positioned for an AI boom.

Keep reading to see what else TechCrunch is covering this weekend.

Weekend news and opinion

Image Credits: Gopixa / Getty Images

Meet three EU lawmakers overseeing key policy: While a final vote is still pending, the next European Commission seems poised to kick off on December 1. That means new leadership for a bloc that's often taken an aggressive stance toward tech regulation. Natasha Lomas highlights three incoming commissioners overseeing key areas. Read more

Reclaim your online life with popular app alternatives: Zack Whittaker and Devin Coldewey round up a variety of apps that they say aren't owned by Big Tech and are free of ad tracking and government surveillance — apps like self-hosted Dropbox alternative Nextcloud and open source password manager Bitwarden. Read more

What else we're reading 📗

To commemorate Microsoft's 50th anniversary, Wired looks at how CEO Satya Nadella has made the company relevant again, with a focus on its partnership with OpenAI. (Microsoft chief scientist Jaime Teevan recalls screaming, drinking whiskey, and watching "Terminator 2" after seeing her first demo of GPT-4.) Read more

Also, The New York Times looks at how Google seems to have developed a culture of concealment to avoid creating a damaging paper trail that could be used when/if the company is sued. Read more