Russia's Sberbank Plans Joint aI Research with China As DeepSeek
Russian president ordered Sberbank to partner with China
China, Russia AI alliance seen as risk by the West
DeepSeek success lines up with Sberbank's method, CEO states
Sberbank made AI platforms openly available, CEO states
(Adds more 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 jobs, a leading executive at Russia's most significant bank told Reuters, as China's DeepSeek has upended the tech landscape by creating an AI design a lot more cheaply than U.S. competitors.
Russia and China, which share what they call a "no limitations" tactical partnership, have long spoke about AI cooperation - consisting of in military applications - however little is publicly learnt about its depth or scope.
Sberbank, under CEO German Gref, has actually changed itself from a Soviet-style former state savings bank strained by burdensome bureaucracy into among Russia's leading players in artificial intelligence and launched its GigaChat design in 2023.
"Sberbank has lots of researchers. Through them, we plan to perform joint research tasks with researchers from China," Sberbank First Deputy CEO Alexander Vedyakhin told Reuters. He did not define who the bank prepares to team up with in China.
DeepSeek, a startup, sent shockwaves through global markets last month as investors bet that its low-cost models would threaten the dominance of U.S. leaders such as Nvidia.
A possible AI alliance between Russia and China, cast by Washington as the biggest country state threats to the West, might further shake up 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 everything from AI and quantum computing to artificial biology and hard military power.
The West's efforts to separate Russia over the war in Ukraine have actually pressed Moscow and Beijing more detailed - and Putin has in recent months explained China as an "ally".
"China is a partner of Russia on lots of concerns of the global agenda, and the level of clinical cooperation between our countries can be reinforced through partnership in between our scientists," Sberbank's First Deputy CEO added.
AI ALLIANCE?
Putin has advised 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 tough to evaluate as some are secret.
Like China, Russia is having a hard time to develop domestic computing capability due to sanctions that limit imports of the current Western hardware, and is seeking alternative services to remain competitive in the AI race.
Russia presently ranks 31st out of 83 countries for AI implementation, development, and investment according to UK-based Tortoise Media's Global AI Index, trailing not only the United States and China however also fellow BRICS members India and Brazil.
Vedyakhin said that since the launch of DeepSeek's models, Sberbank has compared them to GigaChat MAX, its most innovative design, developing that the Chinese competitor transcended in scientific jobs, while GigaChat was on par or better in banking.
Vedyakhin noted that DeepSeek's success lines up with Sberbank's strategy of finding low-cost services instead of investing billions in calculating facilities megaprojects like Stargate, an endeavor announced by U.S. President Donald Trump.
"DeepSeek has proven that even with decreased abilities, 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 actually made many of its AI platforms openly available, consisting of the text-to-image model Kandinsky, suvenir51.ru called after the 20th-century progressive 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 brought in a huge neighborhood," Vedyakhin said. (Reporting by Gleb Bryanski; Editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Alexander Smith)