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YandexGPT
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YandexGPT

Family of large language models built by the Russian internet company Yandex.

On 8 October 2026 Ukraine disabled Yandex's Sasovo data centre, which Al Jazeera said holds two of the company's three AI training supercomputers, the machines behind models such as YandexGPT.

Last refreshed: 12 October 2026

Timeline for YandexGPT

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Background

YandexGPT is a family of large language models built by Yandex, the Russian internet company. Yandex unveiled it on 17 May 2023 and built it into its voice assistant, Alice. YandexGPT 2 followed in September 2023 and YandexGPT 4 in October 2024, offered to businesses through Yandex Cloud. Yandex later folded the models into its Alice AI family.

The war reached YandexGPT on 8 October 2026, when a Ukrainian strike disabled the Sasovo data centre. Al Jazeera said the site holds two of the three machines on which Yandex trains its models; Yandex has not said whether YandexGPT training was affected. Zelenskyy called the strikes a mirror response to Russian attacks on Ukrainian data centres.

The strike widened Kyiv's target list from fuel to computing power, and onto a company whose services millions of Russian civilians use.

Common Questions
What is YandexGPT?
YandexGPT is a family of large language models built by the Russian company Yandex, unveiled on 17 May 2023 and used in its Alice voice assistant.Source: Wikipedia
Did Ukraine's drone strike on Yandex hit its AI training?
Drones knocked out Yandex's Sasovo data centre on 8 October 2026. Al Jazeera reported the site houses two of the three supercomputers Yandex uses to train its AI models; Yandex did not say whether they survived.Source: Al Jazeera
When was YandexGPT launched?
Yandex unveiled YandexGPT on 17 May 2023. YandexGPT 2 followed in September 2023 and YandexGPT 4 in October 2024.Source: Wikipedia
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