Nebius launches AI data centre in Paris as part of $1B European investment plan

Nebius today announced the launch of a new data centre in Paris — among the first in Europe to offer NVIDIA’s H200 Tensor Core GPUs. The company, which is the rebranded European arm of “Russia’s Google,” Yandex, is investing more than $1bn to build AI infrastructure across the continent by mid-2025. 

“We work in a new industry which requires both deep technology and significant capital,” said Arkady Volozh, CEO and founder of Nebius, adding that the company’s data centre in Finland already provides the latest high-performance compute, tools and services to AI developers.

“The addition of our new GPU cluster in Paris is the next step in our plan to expand Europe’s AI capacity as we develop Nebius into a leading global AI infrastructure company,” Volozh said. 

Volozh aims for Nebius to be a Phoenix rising from the ashes of what remained of Yandex following the company’s divestment from Russia earlier this year. The $5.4bn deal constituted the largest corporate exit from the country since the start of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine over two years ago.

Nebius is building infrastructure to meet the rising demand for AI, building “technology for technologists,” or T2T. The business’ core product is an AI-centric cloud platform for intense AI workloads. Nebius also promises to be one of the first to bring Nvidia’s fabled Blackwell platform to customers in 2025. 

And it has grand plans indeed, having already signed letters of intent for two more data centres at thus far undisclosed greenfield locations in Europe. It will also expand its existing data centre in Mäntsälä, just north of Helsinki in Finland.

Nebius has its headquarters in the Netherlands, but still employs mostly former Yandex employees. “Europe’s challenge in the global AI race is competing for talent. This is what we have — very smart and talented people, capable of creating essential innovative technologies,” Volozh said in a statement this summer.