Cloud computing company Nebius to Acquire Israeli AI Startup Tavily in Deal Worth Up to $400 Million

Nebius, which spun off from Russian internet giant Yandex in 2024 and is traded on Nasdaq with a market capitalization of approximately $24 billion, has recently expanded its activity in Israel, including establishing the Israel Innovation Authority’s AI supercomputer infrastructure.

Founded in 2024, Tavily develops software that enables AI agents to retrieve real-time, up-to-date information required for complex tasks such as programming, financial trading and enterprise operations.

“We extract information in real time to feed it to AI agents,” said Rotem Weiss, Tavily’s founder and CEO, in a conversation with Calcalist. “The agent receives tools that make high-level information accessible, prioritize it and extract it optimally.”

The company was founded by Weiss, Assaf Alovik and Yuval Rozio, who also serves as managing partner at Alpha Wave Global. Tavily has raised $25 million to date from investors including Insight Partners and Alpha Wave Global, whose portfolio includes SpaceX, X (formerly Twitter), Monzo and HiBob.

Tavily employs about 30 people across offices in New York, Tel Aviv and Abu Dhabi and plans to double its workforce by the end of the year. According to the company, its platform has surpassed one million monthly downloads and serves more than 700,000 users of its AI agents.

The company says it provides services to several Fortune 500 firms, helping financial institutions prevent fraud, logistics providers optimize delivery networks and academic institutions conduct advanced research. Tavily also works with leading AI model companies, including Groq and Cohere.

“We work with various model companies such as Grok,” Weiss said. “Companies are looking for a uniform search layer that allows the use of a large number of models. There are more than 700,000 users of our agents. If every company developed its own search capability, it would be heavy. We were born into the world of agents, unlike traditional search companies.”

Nebius Expands Its AI Software Stack

Nebius said the acquisition is part of a broader strategy to build a unified AI platform where companies can develop, fine-tune and operate autonomous agents at enterprise scale.

By integrating Tavily’s agent-based search capabilities into its AI cloud infrastructure, Nebius aims to expand the software stack available to developers building complex AI systems.

“We are not just an infrastructure (IaaS) company — we are building a complete platform for anyone who wants to develop AI products, agents or services,” said Roman Chernin, co-founder and CFO of Nebius. “Tavily solves a critical part of the technology stack with agent-based search, and it has proven this with strong adoption among developers. The acquisition brings the search layer directly into our system, so developers can focus on their applications instead of managing multiple vendors.”

According to Nebius, Tavily’s technology will become a core component of its integrated AI cloud offering, strengthening its position in the fast-growing market for enterprise-grade autonomous agents.