Russian president bought Sberbank to partner with China

China, Russia AI alliance seen as threat by the West

DeepSeek success aligns with Sberbank's method, CEO states

Sberbank made AI platforms publicly available, CEO says

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

By Gleb Bryanski

MOSCOW, Feb 6 (Reuters) - Sberbank plans to team up with Chinese researchers on joint AI projects, a magnate at Russia's biggest bank told Reuters, as China's DeepSeek has actually upended the tech landscape by developing an AI design much more cheaply than U.S. rivals.

Russia and China, which share what they call a "no limitations" strategic partnership, have long talked about AI cooperation - consisting of in military applications - but little is publicly learnt about its depth or scope.

Sberbank, under CEO German Gref, has changed itself from a Soviet-style previous state savings bank strained by onerous bureaucracy into among Russia's leading gamers in artificial intelligence and released its GigaChat model in 2023.

"Sberbank has many scientists. Through them, we prepare to perform joint research jobs with researchers from China," Sberbank First Deputy CEO Alexander Vedyakhin told Reuters. He did not specify who the bank plans to team up with in China.

DeepSeek, bybio.co a Hangzhou-based startup, sent shockwaves through global markets last month as investors wager that its low-cost designs would threaten the supremacy of U.S. leaders such as Nvidia.

A possible AI alliance between Russia and China, photorum.eclat-mauve.fr cast by Washington as the most significant country state risks 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 portrays the West as decadent and in decline, as China challenges U.S. supremacy in everything from AI and quantum computing to artificial biology and tough military power.

The West's efforts to separate Russia over the war in Ukraine have pressed Moscow and Beijing more detailed - and Putin has in current months explained China as an "ally".

"China is a partner of Russia on many problems of the international program, and the level of clinical cooperation between our nations can be reinforced through cooperation between our researchers," Sberbank's First Deputy CEO added.

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. dominance. But the true state of Russia's own AI jobs is tough to assess 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 most recent Western hardware, and is looking for alternative solutions to remain competitive in the AI race.

Russia currently ranks 31st out of 83 nations for AI application, development, and investment according to UK-based Tortoise Media's Global AI Index, trailing not only 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 actually compared them to GigaChat MAX, its most advanced design, establishing that the Chinese competitor transcended in clinical tasks, while GigaChat was on par or better in banking.

Vedyakhin noted that DeepSeek's success aligns with Sberbank's method of finding inexpensive options instead of investing billions in infrastructure megaprojects like Stargate, a venture announced by U.S. President Donald Trump.

"DeepSeek has actually proven that even with decreased abilities, it is possible to attain quality on par with American models. This raises concerns about the requirement of extreme financial investments when there are engineering developments," Vedyakhin said.

Vedyakhin said that, bybio.co like the creators of DeepSeek, Sberbank has made many of its AI platforms publicly available, consisting of the text-to-image model Kandinsky, named 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 drawn in a big neighborhood," Vedyakhin said. (Reporting by Gleb Bryanski; Editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Alexander Smith)