Sberbank CEO Herman Gref on Developing AI Amid Sanctions and Bringing AI to India

Sberbank, a Russian banking and financial services institution, plans to expand its presence in India. The half-state-owned, half-public banking giant already has branches in the country and is expected to receive a full banking licence in India within the next three years. However, banking expansion is not the only thing on the cards for the bank. Its CEO, Herman Gref, told Gadgets 360 that it developed an in-house artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure at a time when Russia was navigating the economic sanctions. The bank also plans to bring its AI competence to its Indian partners.

Sberbank CEO on How the Company Developed AI Technology

During a roundtable meeting, Gref discussed a wide range of topics, including the institution's plans to expand its operations in India, promoting Indian trades in Russia, Sberbank's foray into education and telecom, and its IT hub in Bengaluru. Additionally, the CEO also revealed how the institution developed its AI infrastructure without any assistance from the West.

Sberbank's AI journey is definitely interesting. At a time when Silicon Valley is racing towards artificial general intelligence (AGI), there was no real knowledge transfer to Moscow. The reason was simple. Due to the Ukraine-Russia conflict, many Western countries have imposed hefty sanctions on the country. This has not only impacted Russian companies financially, but also on the technology front.

“If you asked me six years ago whether it is possible to live without American technology, my answer would have been no. But now, it is a fact,” Gref told Gadgets 360. He explained that the company used its in-house R&D efforts to develop the infrastructure despite the difficult circumstances. “Difficult is a very good training,” he added.

Sberbank has been investing in AI technology for 15 years, the CEO highlighted. And with help from China and its own team of 3,000 engineers and researchers, the organisation was able to not only build proprietary foundation models, but also a multimodal LLM, dubbed GigaChat, which is integrated into its various services. It is also available to the open-source community. Additionally, the financial institution has also developed a suite of open-source image and video generation models under the Kandinsky brand. All of these models are highly efficient for Russian language processing.

The CEO also expressed interest in bringing the company's AI capabilities to India and helping its partners in the country in capacity building. He added that several Indian companies have already requested this, and during his next visit, these discussions might become concrete.

Gref also emphasised the need for a two-way knowledge transfer. “I believe that AI would disrupt everybody, from a personal level to an organisational level. And if you look at the national level, it is crucially important for big countries like India to have their own sovereign model. India has brilliant engineers. We spoke with a few companies that have a plan to teach their fundamental model [to Russian companies],” he added.