Russia's Sberbank Plans Joint aI Research with China As DeepSeek
Russian president ordered Sberbank to partner with China
China, lespoetesbizarres.free.fr Russia AI alliance seen as hazard by the West
DeepSeek success aligns with Sberbank's method, CEO says
Sberbank made AI platforms publicly available, CEO states
(Adds further quotes, details on Russia's AI sector)
By Gleb Bryanski
MOSCOW, Feb 6 (Reuters) - Sberbank plans to work together with Chinese scientists on joint AI tasks, a magnate at Russia's greatest bank told Reuters, as China's DeepSeek has upended the tech landscape by developing an AI design a lot more inexpensively than U.S. competitors.
Russia and China, which share what they call a "no limitations" tactical collaboration, have long spoke about AI cooperation - including in military applications - but little is openly understood about its depth or scope.
Sberbank, under CEO German Gref, has changed itself from a Soviet-style former state savings bank strained by onerous bureaucracy into one of Russia's leading players in synthetic intelligence and launched its GigaChat design in 2023.
"Sberbank has many researchers. Through them, we plan to conduct joint research tasks with scientists from China," Sberbank First Deputy CEO Alexander Vedyakhin told Reuters. He did not specify who the bank plans to collaborate with in China.
DeepSeek, a Hangzhou-based startup, sent shockwaves through global markets last month as investors wager that its low-cost designs would threaten the dominance of U.S. leaders such as Nvidia.
A possible AI alliance in between Russia and China, cast by Washington as the most significant nation state risks to the West, could further shock the AI sector worldwide amid a race between China and the United States for AI supremacy.
President Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping share a broad world view which depicts the West as decadent and in decline, as China challenges U.S. supremacy in whatever from AI and quantum computing to artificial biology and difficult military power.
The West's attempts to isolate Russia over the war in Ukraine have actually pushed Moscow and Beijing more and Putin has in current months explained China as an "ally".
"China is a partner of Russia on many issues of the worldwide program, and the level of clinical cooperation in between our countries can be enhanced through collaboration between our researchers," Sberbank's First Deputy CEO included.
AI ALLIANCE?
Putin has instructed Sberbank, which is under Western sanctions, to construct cooperation with China and other BRICS nations in AI to challenge U.S. supremacy. But the true state of Russia's own AI projects is difficult to examine as some are secret.
Like China, Russia is struggling to establish domestic computing capability due to sanctions that restrict imports of the most recent Western hardware, and is seeking alternative services to remain competitive in the AI race.
Russia currently ranks 31st out of 83 countries for AI application, innovation, and financial investment according to UK-based Tortoise Media's Global AI Index, trailing not just the United States and China but also fellow BRICS members India and Brazil.
Vedyakhin said that since the launch of DeepSeek's models, Sberbank has actually compared them to GigaChat MAX, its most advanced design, developing that the Chinese competitor suvenir51.ru was superior in clinical tasks, while GigaChat was on par or better in banking.
Vedyakhin kept in mind that DeepSeek's success aligns with Sberbank's technique of finding affordable options rather of investing billions in computing facilities megaprojects like Stargate, an endeavor announced by U.S. President Donald Trump.
"DeepSeek has proven that even with lowered capabilities, it is possible to attain quality on par with American models. This raises questions about the necessity of severe financial investments when there are engineering developments," Vedyakhin said.
Vedyakhin said that, like the developers of DeepSeek, Sberbank has made the majority of its AI platforms openly available, including the text-to-image design Kandinsky, called after the 20th-century avant-garde painter Vassily Kandinsky, and its base design GigaChat Lite.
"The success of DeepSeek is mainly due to its openness, which contrasts with the secrecy of OpenAI. This has actually drawn in a substantial community," Vedyakhin said. (Reporting by Gleb Bryanski; Editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Alexander Smith)