July 16 (Reuters) - Freed from its ties to Russia, newly

unveiled Dutch firm Nebius hopes to help lead the great drive to

build the infrastructure underpinning artificial intelligence,

founder Arkady Volozh, who previously set up Russian tech giant

Yandex ( YNDX ), told Reuters.

A Russian consortium of buyers on Monday finalised a

$5.4-billion cash and shares deal to acquire Yandex's ( YNDX )

Russia-based assets, which had been held through Nasdaq-listed

Dutch parent Yandex NV ( YNDX ) , the largest corporate

exit since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, albeit

at a hefty discount.

The deal marked the end of foreign ownership in Russia's

leading technology firm, sharply raising the potential for

Kremlin oversight of Russia's internet space. But it also

released YNV - now rebranding to Nebius Group - from its Russian

shackles, enabling it to pursue development elsewhere.

Volozh, too, is unbound. Personal EU sanctions imposed in

2022 that led him to step down as Yandex ( YNDX ) CEO, were lifted in

March.

"It's good to be free, it's even better to be free with a

couple of billion dollars to build something," Volozh told

Reuters in his first public comments since an anti-war outburst

threatened to derail the whole exit deal in August last year.

What Volozh wants to build is infrastructure based on

Nebius' cloud platform to service the rapidly growing global AI

industry, including large-scale GPU (graphics processing unit)

clusters, cloud platforms and tools and services for developers.

"We hope Nebius will become one of the largest AI

infrastructure companies in the world, certainly in Europe,"

Volozh said. "We understand that something serious is coming,

which probably comes once in a generation, like the internet in

the 1990s."

Volozh would know, having launched Yandex ( YNDX ) in the dotcom

boom, eventually listing on Nasdaq and at one point reaching a

valuation as high as $30 billion.

RIDING THE AI WAVE

AI infrastructure bets have fuelled a rally this year in the

share prices of AI's big three players, Alphabet,

Amazon.com ( AMZN ) and Microsoft ( MSFT ).

Nebius, which has inherited YNV's Nasdaq listing, hopes to

return to trading soon following a long suspension over its

Russian business, and thinks it could be the only publicly

traded stock in AI infrastructure, outside Big Tech.

Nebius, which owns a data centre in Finland and designs

hardware in-house with more than 1,000 engineers plucked from

Russia as the war unfolded, hopes to break even in several

months and then grow on the back of huge demand.

"It's a supply market now, whatever you build is pre-ordered

for months in advance," Volozh said. "If we can ride this wave

it's going to be a good ride."

Despite giving up its Russian business in a cut-price deal,

Nebius has some free cash flow to play with, although part of

the deal's proceeds will be used to buy back shares from the

many investors still holding untradable Nasdaq stock.

"Infrastructure is a very capital-intensive game," Volozh

said. "We are looking at billions of dollars of investments,

part will be financed from our funds, part from external funding

(debt or equity)."

The plan is to build hundreds of megawatts of capacity and

triple the Finland data centre's capacity over the next year,

Volozh said.

Nebius has good access to GPUs thanks to a long-term

relationship with Nvidia ( NVDA ) and while the big players use

Nvidia ( NVDA ) chips to build their own models, Nebius offers a platform

to smaller players.

Convincing investors of its prospects may be the next

challenge, especially should trading on Nasdaq resume, which

Volozh hopes could happen as soon as September.

Mindful that Nebius is a completely different company to

Yandex ( YNDX ), Volozh said it was difficult to speak about any target

share price and said there would be no hard feelings should

investors choose to part ways.

"If someone wants to leave the train now while we are still

in the station, they are welcome to," he said.