MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian internet group Yandex on Thursday signed an agreement with state-owned VTB Bank and other partners to produce servers in an effort to tap into Russia’s growing market for server hardware, the company said.
Often described as Russia’s Google, Yandex offers a raft of services, from advertising and search to ride-hailing and food delivery. On Monday Yandex bought a fashion retailer to expand its e-commerce activities.
Yandex said it would set up a joint venture with VTB, IT group LANIT and computer equipment manufacturer Gigabyte to sell servers in Russia and abroad. The JV would build a plant in Russia to do so, Yandex said.
Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed. Yandex said VTB will be a financial investor in the joint venture. The agreement was signed at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum.
“The plant will produce servers and data storage systems for data centres…and components for smart devices,” Yandex said in a statement. “The first servers should be released in 2022.”
Yandex also said it planned to partially relocate its server production to Russia from China and Taiwan and install these servers in its own data centres and expand its Yandex.Cloud platform.
(Reporting by Alexander Marrow, editing by Maria Kiselyova and Jane Merriman)
