Sberbank Plans Joint AI Research with China

Sberbank intends to collaborate with Chinese researchers on joint AI projects. This was reported to Reuters by the first deputy chairman of the board, Alexander Vedyakhin.

“Sberbank has many scientists. Through them, we plan to conduct joint scientific projects with researchers from China,” he stated.

The top manager did not specify with whom the bank plans to collaborate.

Vedyakhin emphasized that China is a partner of Russia on many international agenda issues, and the level of scientific cooperation between the countries could be enhanced through joint work.

Currently, Russia ranks 31st out of 83 countries in AI adoption, innovation, and investment in the sector, according to British company Tortoise Media. The country lags behind, notably, India and Brazil.

Vedyakhin noted that since the launch of AI models by the Chinese startup DeepSeek, Sberbank has compared them with its own most advanced neural network, GigaChat MAX. According to him, the AI from China surpasses the Russian one in the scientific field but is on par or even inferior in the context of banking tasks.

Sberbank aims to seek cost-effective solutions instead of investing billions in mega-projects of computational infrastructure similar to Stargate.

“DeepSeek has proven that even with limited capabilities, it is possible to achieve quality comparable to American models. This raises the question of the necessity of extreme investments when engineering innovations are available,” said Vedyakhin.

He also emphasized that Sberbank has made most of its AI platforms publicly available, such as the text-to-image transformation model Kandinsky.

“The success of DeepSeek is largely due to its transparency, which contrasts with the secrecy of OpenAI. This has attracted a huge community,” he added.

Earlier in Russia, a virtual assistant based on AI was created for psychologists, doubling productivity, service quality, and revenue.

Back in December 2024, Russian developer Seamless introduced an AI tool for traders, prohibiting trades during emotional upheavals.

In the same month, scientists from Moscow University and the Russian Quantum Center tested the country’s first prototype of a 50-qubit quantum computer.