Russian web giant Yandex targets Indonesia's AI market

Founded in 1997, Yandex launched its search engine the same year. Today, Yandex Search dominates the search engine market in Russia, with a share of over 70 percent. In addition to its search engine, Yandex is also providing online shopping, ridesharing, streaming media, cloud computing, and web mapping services, as well as developing a web browser. Now, this behemoth with over 25,000 employees is targeting the Indonesian AI market.

Reuters reports that Indonesia's communications minister, Meutya Hafid, met the head of the international search division at Yandex, Alexander Popovskiy, and talked about the plans of the Russian company to "widen the search engine platform in Indonesia," but both parties declined to comment when asked about the financial and timing details of the investment. 

Earlier this year, Nvidia and Indonesian telco provider PT Indosat Ooredoo Hutchinson announced the plan to build an AI center in Central Java. The value of the investment, in this case, has been unveiled: $200 million.

Yandex introduced the MatrixNet machine learning algorithm in 2009 and has been using it in multiple products ever since. Even more, CERN is using this technology to analyze the massive data output of the Large Hadron Collider.

Those interested in AI might find Pam Didner's The Modern AI Marketer: Guide to Gen AI Prompts a quite interesting read. This book is currently available for $7.99 in Kindle format and $10.99 in paperback form.