Ai Report
Ai Report
Ai Report
2017
Table of Content
Introduction: AI industry in Russia
List of Top 10 Russia AI Tech Hubs Artificial Intelligence technologies are considered to be an innovative
fuel for economies worldwide. AI sector in Russia is growing rapidly
and the market craves innovative solutions. Machine learning (ML)
Appendix 1: Top 150 Russia AI Companies Profiles
technologies are to attract investments from Russian think-tanks and
investment funds. According to in-depth interviews with the first-
Appendix 2: Top 35 Russia AI Investors Profiles line management of the largest Russian companies one in every three
organizations intend to invest in robotics, deep learning and computer
Appendix 3: 10 Russia AI Tech Hub Profiles vision. The amount of Russian companies which are considering
investing in AI technologies has risen by 1,5 times from the third
Appendix 4: 15 Russia AI Influencers Profiles quarter of the year 2017. Data scientists, entrepreneurs and tech
specialists are developing solutions in tech to meet the demand and
to expand the market.
A survey conducted by a division of “AI Hub” “Data Insight” indicated AI to set trends in economic development for other industries in less
than two years. Russian funds invested 18.3 million USD in 2016 and 37.1 million USD in 2017. Sberbank’s first $100 million venture fund,
SBT Venture Capital, has already invested in AI startups and is highly interested in AI industry as an investment opportunity.
The Russia’s Artificial Intelligence sector is boosting and challenges the way how start-up companies and
corporations are operating. According to co-founder of “VisionLabs”, a company that specializes in
computer vision and machine learning, technologies have already become commodities on the market that
makes cooperation with huge enterprises for start-ups possible. AI Lab resident “OncoUnite”, a project that
develops AI and ML technologies for treating oncological diseases, has a contract with a Russian investor
and presented results to the UK invest funds. Co-founder of OncoUnite Ilya Shevela, MBA, stated that the
technology works with an accuracy of 98,99% and is to be upgraded.
Russian banks and corporations are highly interested in implementing AI-technologies. The head of the
the Russian private space company “Galaktika” Alia Prokofieva emphasized positive results of implemented
technologies based on AI algorithms. In specialized industries emergency situations are modeled and
calculated to decrease a probability of such cases to happen to zero. It took from three to four years to
model and to calculate each process, whereas with AI technologies in four months they get sufficient
analytics.
Russian banks embedded bots that call debtor clients, chatbots for small business, trade bots for traders
and virtual advisors. Russian recruitment agencies launched recommendation systems based on Machine
Learning (ML) technologies. A large retail company used robotics automation solutions for interviewing
applicants.
Russian state-owned organizations have already invested more than 23 billion roubles in Artificial Intelligence services for the past 10
years. Russian government invested in projects focused on data analysis (33%), decision-making algorithms (16.5%), image, and video
recognition (13.9%) in different industries namely military, transport, natural gas and healthcare. Geopolitical issues determine a demand on
Artificial Intelligence systems for military industry. Data analysis and recognition systems are applied in logistic management.
Underdeveloped infrastructure determines the inability of start-ups to be integrated into business processes. Maria Mikhailenko, a founder of
“SmartAn”, a company that specializes in predictive analytics for banks and financial institutions, noticed that Russian corporations are not
willing to give an access to data for ML that makes a growth of startups complicated.
AI market in Russia is mostly represented by startups specialized in computer vision (33%). Natural language processing technologies, namely
methods of text analysis (14%), chatbots (9%) and speech recognition (5%) are on the second place in the ranking. Startups that are using
intellectual data analysis represent 16% of the market. The market for recommendation systems (8%), predictive analytics (7%) and robotics
(7%) is at the earliest stage of market development.
Companies leading in Artificial intelligence are designing their strategy for entering developed markets. Corporations are interested in
cooperating with teams and with startups to implement their technologies in their business processes. However in some industries
implementation faces difficulties related to industry specifications. Russian startups have a potential to operate in the global market,
although they deal with “gaps” in the Russian innovation environment.
3 Russian companies and experts are not fully integrated in international academic exchange. Although Russian AI research
has strong history but now it is only ranked 20th by the number research publications in the field in 2016. The
communication with researchers and the awareness of the latest developments in AI technologies is more productive if a
company is based either in London or in San Francisco rather than in Moscow. Doing a research in one of the Western
European capitals gives access to the European knowledge base.
4 AI startups in Russia are facing challenges with recruitment of machine learning specialists. Hiring foreign specialists and
keeping Russian specialists from moving abroad makes recruitment process complicated. Companies are advised to open
boarders for international experts. In this case, Russian government is expected to stop Russian companies from moving
abroad, in order to retain AI specialists in Russia.
Russia AI Landscape
Mind Map
Overall, Russia has a strong position in the global Artificial Intelligence market. The overview of Russian influencers, startups
and researchers in the sphere of Machine learning is showing a great perspective for development of the Russian AI market. The
amount of investments from businesses and government is rising. However, there are challenges for Russian AI ecosystem. The
unwillingness to disclose information, the absence of integration of Russian companies in the global economy as well as the
problem of retention and recruitment of AI professionals creates obstacles for Russian start-ups to boost.
T4S
Recommender
Systems
AI Companies
Function
technology / Industry
Technology
Recommender
Systems
Intelligent
Data Analysis
T4S
Predictive
Analytics
Big Data
Services
Computer
Vision
Chatbots &
Assistants
Search Engines
& Language
Processing
Robotics
United States
India
China
Russia
United Kingdom
France
Germany
Canada
Australia
Spain
Taiwan
Japan
Netherlands
Singapore
Poland
Srailanka
Italy
Switzerland
Brazil
Belgum
Finland
Southkorea
Sweden
Israel
Hangary
Ukraine
Iran
Czechrepublic
Newzealand
Maxico
Frequency
50 Google.com
berkeley.edu
umontreat.ca
facebook.com
microsoft.com
cmu.edu
stanford.edu
openai.com
nyu.edu
ibm.com
40 toronto.edu
mit.edu
washington.edu
umass.edu
umich.edu
usl.ac.uk
ttic.edu
illinois.edu
columbia.edu
ed.ac.uk
30 harvard.edu
uva.nl
twitter.com
Affiliation
uchicago.edu
intel.com
cam.ac.uk
ox.ac.uk
salesforse.com
cornell.edu
nvidia.com
20 tsinghua.edu.cn
technion.ac.il
baidu.com
adobe.com
usc.edu
polymtl.ca
mcgill.ca
samsung.com
gatech.edu
ucla.edu
10 cvc.uab.cat
inria.fr
purdue.edu
skoltech.ru
iitm.ac.in
uci.edu
nec-labs.com
tuebingen.mpg.de
robots.ox.ac.uk
lip6.fr
0 20 40 60 80 100
Frequency
List of Top 15
Russia AI Influencers
Mikhail Burtsev
Head of laboratory,
MIPT
Arkady Volozh
Yandex founder
Ilya Munchik
Main researcher,
School of Data Analysis
Base: Moscow
Base: USA Employees: 1-10
Base: Moscow, Russia Employees: 1-10 Established: 2016
Employees: 10-50 Established: 2016 Intento benchmarks Cognitive Services and provides
a single API to use all of them. Intento helps to discover
Established: 2013 Research the market in just 7 seconds and use the best Artificial Intelligence services without
with the help of Big Data and Artificial spending human effort on integration and switching
Retail Rocket offers user behavior-based
providers.For each service category, Intento provides
online shopping recommendation services Intelligence a Single API to clients. The service requests are routed
to the best provider based on the data, client’s preferences,
and our unique benchmarks.
Industries / Functions Industries / Functions
B2B / E-commerce Finance / Analytics (Market research) Industries / Functions
HowPop
10. Forecsys
11. NativeOS 12. Iceberg
Industries / Functions
Industries / Functions Industries / Functions
All / Finance, Marketing
All / Advertising Entertainment / Analytics
AI Sphere
AI Sphere AI Sphere
Big Data; Machine Learning; Predictive
Analytics; NLP Neural Networks, Computer Vision, Machine Learning,
Content Analysis Data Analysis
Total investments
Total investments Total investments
———
——— ———
Industries / Functions
Industries / Functions Industries / Functions
Cubic Robotics manufactures robots for home use.
Its features include recognizing human speech,
B2B / Analytics, Human Resources, All / Security, Software answer questions, and search for information
in the Internet.
Administration
AI Sphere
AI Sphere AI Sphere
Deep Learning; Image recognition;
Optimization, Machine Learning, RPA Machine Learning, Data Analysis Recommender systems; Voice recognition;
NLP
Total investments Total investments
Total investments
71.3M ———
1.5 M
Industries / Functions
Industries / Functions Industries / Functions
Electronics / IoT
Transport / Autopilot & Navigation All / Robotics
AI Sphere
AI Sphere AI Sphere
Robotics;Machine Learning;Autonomous
Deep Learning; Image recognition; Vehicles;Artificial Intelligence, Computer Robotics,
Autopilots Vision, Objects Recognition Machine Learning
100 K 81 K ———
Base: San Francisco, USA Base: New York, USA Base: Kazan
Employees: 1 - 10 Employees: 10 - 50 Employees: 1 - 10
Established: 2016 Established: 2011 Established: 2013
Prisma transforms photos into artworks GeoCV is a venture capital backed 3D Mobile application for drivers with road signs
using the styles of famous artists: Van Gogh, capturing technology company. Company’s recognition and navigation in Augmented
Picasso, Levitan, as well as world famous vision is to enable everyone to capture the world Reality
ornaments and patterns. A unique combination in 3D with a phone and share it in virtual and
of neural networks and artificial intelligence helps augmented reality.
turn memorable moments into timeless art.
Established: 1989 Established: 2016 Icon8 is an artificial intelligence that helps its
users transform their selfies into a wide range
ABBYY provides document conversion, Cloud Service for speech analysis for of arts. Icon8 is used through the iOS and
optical character recognition, data capture, call-centers of all sizes Android platforms and through the Facebook
Messenger application. It allows its users to snap
and linguistic software and services.
selfies, apply styles, and share the new look with
their friends.
Industries / Functions
Industries / Functions
Industries / Functions Entertainment / Analytics (Human
Telecommunications/ All Emotion Analysis)
Telecommunications / All
AI Sphere
AI Sphere AI Sphere
Text Recognition, Neural Networks,
Text Recognition, Data Analysis Text Recognition, Text Analysis
Data Analysis, Machine Vision,
Geodata Analysis
All / consulting, outsourcing Media / consulting, outsourcing Oil & Gas, Health / consulting,
outsourcing
AI Sphere AI Sphere
AI Sphere
AI Assistant, Recommender Systems Big Data, Data Mining, Data Analysis
AI;Big Data
Established: 2017 Established: 2014 E-contenta helps brands target their convertible
auriences with the most relevant editorial, prepared
Inleksys provides services for big data ——— and delivered in the format of native ads.
analysis, data mining and machine learning
Semantic Hub
Aurora
STOCKSNEURAL
Industries / Functions
Industries / Functions Industries / Functions All / Security
All / Marketing, Advertising All / Human Resources
AI Sphere
AI Sphere Computer Vision
AI Sphere
Image Processing, Deep Learning
Chat bot, Natural Language Processing
Total investments Total investments
Total investments
——— ———
———
Big Data, Natural Language Big Data, Natural Language Processing Recommender System
Processing
Segmento is a major Russian programmatic Established: 2015 FindFace’s technology offers high face
platform, which employs machine learning recognition accuracy, and is proven for fast,
technology to target digital advertising. Expert System for business. large-scale search of photos.
Base: England
Employees: 10 - 50 Base: Russia
Established: 1998 Employees: ——— Base: Ekaterinburg, Russia
Company owns and develops Speereo Established: 2016 Employees: 1 - 50
Speech Recognition (SSR) system.
It creates and distributes SW, HW Everypixel is a powerful search engine Established: 2015
that indexes 51 paid and free stock image
and systems based on SSR. Latest
websites, and allows users to search through Company that creates solutions for big data
product – universal Voice Remote. a massive database of stock photos in seconds. analysis and computer vision.
AI Sphere
AI Sphere AI Sphere
Recommendation Systems, Big Data,
Computer Vision, Natural Language Big Data, MAchine Learning, Data Mining, Natural Language Processing
Processing, Neural Networks Computer Vision
1M ——— ———
Industries / Functions
Industries / Functions Industries / Functions
All / Marketing, Advertising,
Administration All / Analytics All / Analytics
Base: Moscow
Base: Moscow
Focus Region: Global
Base: Moscow Focus Region: Russia
LETA Capital is a corporate boutique venture
Focus Region: Russia Baring Vostok Capital Partners Limited fund investing in innovative IT startup companies
Investment fund with more than is a venture capital and private equity at their seed or early growth stage
200 portfile companies firm.
Base: Moscow
Base: Moscow
Focus Region: Russia
Base: Moscow Focus Region: Russia, US, Europe
Yandex is one of the largest internet
Focus Region: Russia Venture Capital Fund of Larnabel Enterprises,
companies in Europe, operating Russia’s
a company founded by the Gutseriev family
Studio Artsofte - professional IT-company, most popular search engine and its most
to invest in the information technology sector.
specializing in web technologies visited website.
10. Skolkovo Foundation 11. Finstar Financial Group 12. AltaIR Capital
Focus Region: Russia Focus Region: Europe Focus Region: USA, Europe, Russia, Israel
Base: California
Focus Region: Europe, US, Israel, Russia
Base: Moscow Base: Moscow
Founders: Dmitry Smirnov, Oleg Seydak
Focus Region: Global Focus Region: Global Flint Capital I, II is an international venture
iTech Capital invests up to US$10 mln. capital $200 million funds investing across
Emery Capital is a venture capital
per deal in the digital world globally. Quick Europe, Israel and US with offices in Palo Alto,
management company that invests Boston and Tel Aviv. Flint Capital focuses on
and effective due diligence is based on
in global-focused early stage technological recognised professional experience of AI/ML, SaaS, Advertisement, Automotive,
startups. the international investment team CyberSecurity and Enterprise sectors.
16. Grishin Robotics 17. Gagarin Capital 18. Sistema Venture Capital
Base: California
Base: Moscow
Focus Region: Europe, US, Russia
Focus Region: Russia, CIS
Founder: Dmitry Grishin. VC firm based
in Silicon Valley and London, currently Base: California A venture capital firm focused
investing its second early-stage fund.
Focus Region: USA, Israel, CIS on investments in the growth-stage
Grishin Robotics has been one of the
first to start supporting entrepreneurs Internet companies (or at least Series
A venture firm focusing on the
in robotics, IoT, AI, smart hardware A Round).
Internet and high-tech.
and associated software.
19. Almaz Capital 20. Titanium Investments 21. I2BF Global Ventures
Base: California
Base: New York
Focus Region: US, Europe, Russia, Israel, Base: New York
Southeast Asia Focus Region: US, Russia
Focus Region: USA, Russia, Israel, Europe
Invested in: Founders: Kirill Sheynkman, Leonid
Invested in: Founders: Ilya Zubarev, Serguei Invested in: Founders: Oleg Koujikov, Boguslavsky. RTP Ventures is an early-stage venture
Beloussov, Dmitry Chikhachev, Andre Bliznyuk.
Alexander Lazarev, Alexander Turkot capital fund investing in companies that create applied
Runa Capital is a technology-focused venture
Maxfield Capital - helps startups go global solutions for Financial Services and Healthcare
capital firm whose investments have created using IT and IoT Technologies as a foundation.
or incubated companies with more than $10B – it specializes on early stage opportunities
These companies almost always provided B2B
in assets. that are prepared to tackle global markets. products and usually deliver these products as SaaS.
25. Viazra Investments 26. Sistema JSFC 27. Pulsar Venture Capital
Focus Region: Russia, CIS The main goal of the iPavlov project is HSE Business Incubator is a department of National
сonversational intelligence. To solve this Research University “Higher School of Economics”.
The biggest russian-language online community ambitious task, iPavlov does research to Our main aim to provide an environment where young
about data science, machine learning and artificial advance existing state of the art in the field. entrepreneurs can build and develop their own start-ups.
intelligence with more than 6000 participants. iPavlov creates platform that makes it possible HSE Business Incubator also organizes workshops, contests,
Open Data Science actively supports conferences, to easily test ideas and develop scalable solutions public seminars, meetings and consultancies with experts
meetings and hacathons. for dialogue systems in business.HSE Business Incubator is open for all student,
staff, alumni and friends of Higher School of Economics
Base: Moscow
Focus Region: Russia Base: Moscow
Base: Moscow Focus Region: Europe
Science Guide brings together developers,
Focus Region: Russia scientists and businesspeople at multidisciplinary
Neuronet is an organization that fosters projects
conferences, meetups and hackathons.
in the field of neural networks. It accelerates
Investment fund with more than These collaborations provide the solutions for
neuronet projects, organizes conferences,
200 portfile companies scientific problems and the development
meetings and other events
of knowledge-based business projects
Investment size
Investment size Investment size
———
45k - 6.7M ———
Number of investments
Number of investments Number of investments
———
10 - 50 ———
10. Eclass
Base: Russia
Focus Region: Russia, CIS, Europe, USA,
China
Eclass is an online class giving their
emphasis on complex and sophisticated
disciplinary skills and understandings
Investment size
———
Number of investments
——-
List of Top 15
Russian influencers
in AI
Arkady Volozh
Arkady Volozh is a principal founder and largest individual shareholder of search engine Yandex, Russia’s Google.
In 2016 Volozh co-founded Turkish food delivery outfit Getir and became investor and board member in Israeli firm,
NeuroSteer, brain monitoring and neurofeed technology firm
Alexander Dyakonov
Alexander Dyakonov is one of the best specialists in data science in Russia. For a long period of time he held the
1st place in Kaggle AI specialists rating. Currently Alexander is a professor at MSU.
Dmitry Vetrov
Dmitry Vetrov is a head of Bayesian Methods research group. He believes that we’re moving towards The New
Mathematics or the mathematics of big data age where completely new learning, inference, optimization and
storage technologies will appear. The first steps (deep learning, tensor decomposition, stochastic optimization)
has been made already but many more to be made in recent years. The creation of those new technologies is
his mission.
David Yang
David Yang is the founder of ABBYY is a leading provider of document recognition, data capture,
and linguistic technologies and services.
Konstantin Vorontsov
Researcher, expert in Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing
and Predictive Analytics
Dmitry Grishin
Dmitry Grishin is a Russian businessman, investor and Internet entrepreneur. He is best known as co-founder,
Chairman and CEO of Mail.ru Group. Grishin also made significant contributions to Russia’s internet presence,
Runet, in its early days. In 2012, Grishin invested $25 million to found the first-ever robotics investment company,
Grishin Robotics, to focus exclusively on consumer robotics.
Andrey Gulin
Andrey Gulin works on the improving of quality search in Yandex. One of the authors and creators
of MatrixNet search algorithm. Andrey Gulin was a speaker at many AI related conferences.
Herman Gref
Herman Gref is a Russian statesman and top manager. He was the Minister of Economics and Trade of Russia
from May 2000 to September 2007. He currently is the CEO and Chairman of the Executive Board of Sberbank.
Herman Gref actively supports and promotes AI and ML technologies. He fis also a member of boards
and supervisory boards of a number of companies, including Yandex
Mikhail Burtsev
The field of scientific interests is connected with creating artificial cognitive systems
Evgeny Burnaev
Evgeny’s research interests encompass the areas of regression based on Gaussian Processes, bootstrap,
confidence sets and conformal predictors, volatility modeling and nonparametric estimation, statistical decisions
and rapid detection of anomalies in complex multicomponent systems.
Andrey Ivaschenko
Andrey Ivaschenko serves as the Chairman and Director of ChemRar, the Moscow-based pharmaceutical
and biotechnology services company at Viriom Inc. Leader at Neuronet working group.
Andrey Sebrant
Andrey Serbrant is a director of marketing services at Yandex. He is a big machine learning popularizator
and speaker at many AI-related events
Viktor Lempitsky
Viktor is a computer vision expert and researcher. He is a head of several CV groups in Skoltech and Yandex,
teacher in 3 universites and regular member of machine learning conferences.
Ilya Muchnik
Ilya Muchnik is a head of “School of Data Analysis” and research supervisor of 17 doctors
of sciences.
Sci-guide.com
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