Russia's tech giant Yandex has opened its largest foreign headquarters in Belgrade, Serbia, the company announced. 

Yandex, often dubbed "Russia's Google" due to its dominant search engine capturing up to 60% of the Russian market, is one of many Russian IT companies that have relocated operations to Serbia since the introduction of Western sanctions on Russia, following the invasion of Ukraine

As well as establishing its largest international office in Belgrade, Yandex also unveiled its development centre. Yandex's planned hub aims to create state-of-the-art solutions and drive technology innovation.

The newly established development centre now employs roughly 1,000 people, but the goal is to increase that to 2,000 by the end of the year. A source close to the company told bne IntelliNews: “It is an international atmosphere, a mix of IT people from all over the world.’’

In an official statement, Artem Savinovsky, the general director of Yandex, said: “We are proud to have assembled such an extraordinary team of talented experts.” 

Savinovsky went on to state that the corporation sees Belgrade as its second-largest destination in terms of personnel numbers in the future.  

A second Belgrade office for Yandex is planned to be opened soon. 

Yandex's two Belgrade offices will serve as research and development hubs, with IT specialists prioritising the development of GPT-like language models to be used by various future services, including its personal assistant "Alisa". 

They will also construct hardware smart devices and offering artificial intelligence-based services like ride-hailing and delivery. 

Among the other tech companies to relocate operations to Serbia is Luxsoft, which opened its offices in Belgrade where 85% of its employees are from Russia.