Self-driving taxis are making their first steps in Russia with a new experiment led in Innopolis, a brand new tech city under completion on the outskirts of Kazan, 800 km eastwards from Moscow. In just two months, from Aug. 25 to Oct. 28, 1,000 autonomous rides with passengers were completed, claims Yandex.Taxi, the company behind … Yandex.Taxi experiments driverless vehicle in Russian tech city, celebrates first 1,000 rides Read More ..read more

Yandex has published YaLM 100B, a bilingual neural network for generating and processing text. It’s the largest GPT-like model in the public domain. It can be used freely by developers and researchers from all over the world. YaLM 100B contains 100 billion parameters, more than any GPT-like model available in open-source under a license that … Yandex publishes YaLM 100B, the largest GPT-like neural network in open source Read More ..read more

Update July 9: Yandex announced the cancellation of the deal, for undisclosed reasons, according to media reports. The company is considering “other options to enter the fashion segment.” Yandex.Market is in the process of acquiring KupiVIP, one of the most established e-commerce brands in Russia, founded back in 2008 by German entrepreneur Oskar Hartmann. Also … Glorious story but modest exit for online fashion pioneer KupiVIP Read More ..read more

Yandex, Russia’s biggest Internet company, has released an online game that invites players to guess where photos were taken. The images are taken from a database of photos uploaded by users to the Yandex.Maps app (similar to Google Maps). The human players compete against the specially trained neural network Alice, which is already used as … How a neural network learned to recognize Russia Read More ..read more

Hackers working for Western intelligence agencies broke into Russian internet search company Yandex in late 2018, deploying a rare type of malware in an attempt to spy on user accounts, four people with knowledge of the matter told Reuters. The malware, called Regin, is known to be used by the “Five Eyes” intelligence-sharing alliance of … Reuters: Western intelligence hacked Yandex to spy on accounts Read More ..read more

As the Russian e-commerce market a promising development cycle, with many domestic and foreign players reporting record sales growth, market research agency Data Insight recently released a study on the local fulfilment service market. Here are the key findings of this report (the full version is available only in Russian language): The Russian fulfilment service market … Report: Russian fulfilment service market exceeds $200 million Read More ..read more

Yandex, the NASDAQ-listed Russian search giant, and Hyundai Mobis, a global manufacturer of automotive components, have agreed to jointly develop control systems for Level 4 and Level 5 autonomous vehicles. In the first phase, according to the memorandum of understanding announced yesterday, the partnership will focus on “developing a driverless prototype vehicle based on standard … Yandex and Hyundai Mobis announce partnership on self-driving vehicles Read More ..read more

Yandex, the NADSDAQ-listed Russian search giant, has acquired online Q&A service TheQuestion with a plan to merge it with an analog in-house service. Neither the amount nor other details of the transaction have been disclosed.  Founded in 2014 by Russian journalist Tonya Samsonova, TheQuestion attracted equity funding from individual investors in 2016. The service has generated … Yandex acquires Q&A service TheQuestion Read More ..read more

Since late 2017, OppenheimerFunds, a family of major investment funds, has invested again in NASDAQ-listed Yandex, according to the latest filing submitted to the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The US investment firm reportedly boosted its stake in the Russian company from 1.8% to 6.41% or 18.365 million shares as of December 31, 2018. Yandex stock is … Giant US investment firm OppenheimerFunds invested again in Yandex in 2017 and 2018 Read More ..read more