Russian president bought Sberbank to partner with China

China, Russia AI alliance viewed as danger by the West

DeepSeek success lines up with Sberbank's technique, CEO states

Sberbank made AI platforms openly available, CEO states

(Adds additional quotes, details on Russia's AI sector)

By Gleb Bryanski

MOSCOW, Feb 6 (Reuters) - Sberbank plans to collaborate with Chinese researchers on joint AI projects, a leading executive at Russia's greatest bank told Reuters, systemcheck-wiki.de as China's DeepSeek has actually upended the tech landscape by creating an AI design much more inexpensively than U.S. rivals.

Russia and China, which share what they call a "no limits" strategic partnership, 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 actually transformed itself from a Soviet-style previous state cost savings bank strained by burdensome administration into one of Russia's leading players in artificial intelligence and launched its GigaChat design in 2023.

"Sberbank has numerous researchers. Through them, we prepare to conduct joint research study projects with researchers from China," Sberbank First Deputy CEO Alexander Vedyakhin informed Reuters. He did not define who the bank plans to work together with in China.

DeepSeek, a Hangzhou-based start-up, sent shockwaves through global markets last month as financiers wager that its inexpensive models would threaten the supremacy of U.S. leaders such as Nvidia.

A prospective AI alliance in between Russia and China, cast by Washington as the greatest country state threats to the West, might even more shake up the AI sector worldwide amid a race in between China and the United States for AI dominance.

President Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping share a broad world view which portrays the West as decadent and in decline, as China challenges U.S. supremacy in everything from AI and quantum computing to synthetic biology and hard military power.

The West's efforts to separate Russia over the war in Ukraine have actually pushed 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 problems of the worldwide program, and the level of clinical cooperation in between our countries can be strengthened through cooperation between our scientists," Sberbank's First Deputy CEO added.

AI ALLIANCE?

Putin has advised Sberbank, which is under Western sanctions, to build cooperation with China and other BRICS countries in AI to challenge U.S. dominance. But the real state of Russia's own AI projects is tough to examine as some are secret.

Like China, Russia is struggling to develop domestic computing capacity due to sanctions that restrict 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 application, development, and 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 because the launch of DeepSeek's models, Sberbank has compared them to GigaChat MAX, its most sophisticated design, establishing that the Chinese rival was exceptional in scientific jobs, while GigaChat was on par or much better in banking.

Vedyakhin noted that DeepSeek's success lines up with Sberbank's strategy of discovering inexpensive options instead of investing billions in computing facilities megaprojects like Stargate, a venture revealed by U.S. President Donald Trump.

"DeepSeek has actually shown that even with decreased abilities, it is possible to attain quality on par with American models. This raises concerns about the requirement of severe 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 model Kandinsky, called after the 20th-century progressive painter Vassily Kandinsky, and its base model 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 community," Vedyakhin said. (Reporting by Gleb Bryanski; Editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Alexander Smith)