Dutch cloud computing company Nebius has reportedly raised $700 million from investors including Nvidia.
The company, which rebranded from Russian internet company Yandex, has sold that business’s search engine and now focuses on cloud-computing services for artificial intelligence (AI) operations, Bloomberg News reported Monday (Dec. 2).
CEO Arkady Volozh said the new funding will support the expansion of the company’s “GPU clusters” — a package of specialized AI chips and cloud services found in data centers.
Nebius rebranded after selling its Russian business. Yandex’s shares on the Nasdaq were suspended when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. Nebius, meanwhile, resumed trading in October, Bloomberg said.
The report also noted that the funding comes as major investors are funneling vast sums of capital into the tech that supports AI. For example, CoreWeave, which competes with Nebius and has also been backed by Nvidia, is planning a $23 billion public listing.
As PYMNTS wrote last month, generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has become an crucial tool for chief financial officers (CFOs), who see the technology as vital to their organization’s strategic and operational planning.
According to a PYMNTS Intelligence report, “Most CFOs See Limited ROI From GenAI, but Boost Its Investment,” many CFOs report limited return on investment (ROI) for their AI efforts, even as they increasingly rely on GenAI for medium-impact tasks like financial reporting and data visualizations. In addition, the research found, many companies with at least $1 billion in annual revenue are committed to expanding their GenAI investments in the coming year.
More recently, PYMNTS examined how chief marketing officers (CMOs) are leveraging GenAI for better customer service.
PYMNTS Intelligence data showed that 97% of CMOs surveyed in July found the technology highly effective for this purpose, compared to 72% in April.
“This surge underscores how GenAI is optimizing customer service workflows rather than replacing human agents. Automated tools powered by generative AI handle routine queries and requests, freeing customer service teams to focus on complex issues requiring a human touch,” PYMNTS wrote. “This balance has proven particularly advantageous in the payments sector, where fast, accurate responses are crucial to maintaining customer trust.”
In addition, GenAI plays a key role in providing real-time, automated responses to customer queries, though its effectiveness lies in its collaborative potential.
“For instance, an AI-driven chatbot might handle initial troubleshooting before escalating unresolved issues to a human representative,” PYMNTS wrote. “By acting as a first line of defense, these systems reduce wait times and improve overall customer satisfaction while keeping human expertise in the loop.”