In 2026, Yandex may begin to close “certain business areas” and “optimize” staff in them, I mentioned Kommersant with reference to sources on the IT market.
According to the publication, the cuts will affect one of the company’s main areas – “research and artificial intelligence services.” They plan to improve the commercial department and individual products, including the Yandex Vzglyad marketing research service. One of Kommersant’s interlocutors said that one of the advertising departments of the commercial department “Research and Artificial Intelligence Services” was almost completely reduced, and for the SME departments (responsible for SMEs) an additional team was introduced to monitor the quality of the work of employees.
According to the newspaper’s source, the company decided to improve the direction of “research and artificial intelligence services” against the backdrop of “weak overall financial results.” Revenue growth reached 10% at the end of 2025 – several times lower than the growth of other large business areas. At the same time, the trend of “research and artificial intelligence services” occupies 34% of the company’s overall revenue structure and is the second most important trend.
After publishing the materials Kommersant, Yandex published A statement denies that the company is planning to lay off workers.
“The information that the company plans to close certain business areas and lay off employees is incorrect. Yandex continues to actively recruit employees in various services, regions and business groups – at the end of 2025, the number of core employees increased by 9% and exceeded 31,500 people. There are now approximately 1,300 open vacancies at Yandex,” the message says.
Experts interviewed by Kommersant noted that most IT companies are now working on reducing costs, and this also applies to optimizing personnel costs, production, marketing and human resources. This is due to the unstable situation in the Russian economy – “there is less money on the market.”