Sberbank Summarized the Company’s Research Activities in 2025

To mark Science Day, Sberbank presented its major research achievements from 2025. Together with its partners, the bank published 440 scientific papers, received 290 nominations for its Science Award, obtained over 100 patents, and implemented the largest open-source project in Europe.

Andrey Belevtsev, Senior Vice President and Head of the Technology Development Division at Sberbank:

The achievements of 2025 are the result of many years of research by a strong scientific community and the coordinated efforts of our team. The collaboration between our scientists and engineers and external partners has led to the publication of 440 scientific papers, about 50% of which have appeared in prestigious international journals—a figure that continues to grow every year. This undoubtedly demonstrates our technological potential. 

Today, the world is witnessing a whole series of impressive breakthroughs in a wide variety of fields of science and technology, particularly in artificial intelligence, which is no longer merely a subject of research. It is becoming part of the scientific process itself, transforming from a supporting tool into a full-fledged intellectual partner. In this context, the development of domestic AI technologies takes on special significance. At Sber, we have established a full development cycle for such technologies—from data collection and preparation to the creation of highly specialized solutions. This allows us to create products that are not only competitive on the global market but also precisely tailored to the characteristics of our culture, language, and the specific needs of users in Russia. 

Moving in this direction requires constant improvement of our products. Last year, we took another step forward in developing our family of proprietary generative models, GigaChat; we launched our AI for Science cloud platform; and our robot, Green, is taking its first steps in the world of Physical AI—something that would have been unimaginable just a few years ago. The future is being shaped right here and now—through dialogue between Sber’s scientists and engineers and their colleagues from around the world.

The Evolution of Thought: From a Scientific Paper to a Space Station

The collaboration between Sber’s scientists and leading Russian and international researchers and institutions has been highly productive. In 2025, Sber and its research partner, the AIRI Institute, published 440 scientific papers. Nearly half of these were published in top international journals and conference proceedings, demonstrating the growing recognition of Russian research by the global academic community. The bank’s scientists are working at the forefront of science—in the fields of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data analysis. Their ideas form the foundation for the technologies of tomorrow. The bank is the government’s largest partner in supporting a network of artificial intelligence research centers. Currently, over 600 scientists from 11 leading centers—including Skoltech, the Higher School of Economics (HSE), the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT), and others—are collaborating with the bank.

More Than Just Publications: Intellectual Capital in Action

Scientific ideas are brought to life through concrete solutions. Sber’s portfolio of Russian and Eurasian patents has exceeded 700. Last year alone, the bank received over 100 new patents protecting unique algorithms, data processing methods, and neural network architectures. These innovations are already being used in the bank’s products and services for retail and corporate clients, laying the groundwork for future innovations.

Artificial intelligence is breaking new ground: from space to robotics

Last year, Sber’s technologies went beyond Earth: GigaChat began operating on the International Space Station and is already helping Roscosmos astronauts with their daily tasks. This is the first—but confident—step toward a large-scale AI presence in space. Another breakthrough was the unveiling of Sber’s first AI robot, named Green. Powered by GigaChat, it represents a new stage in the development of Russian robotics and physical artificial intelligence—Physical AI. This type of artificial intelligence is not confined to a screen—it interacts with the physical world and assists humans in real-world activities.

Open Source: For Technological Independence

As part of the AI Journey 2025 conference, Sber presented and open-sourced the source code for a lineup of cutting-edge Russian neural network models, launching the largest open-source project in Europe. Users now have access to two fundamentally new models, built from scratch to solve Russian-language tasks: GigaChat Ultra Preview and GigaChat Lightning. In addition, the bank released the model weights for its new generation of models: for speech recognition (GigaAM-v3), for video generation (Kandinsky 5.0), and for visual data compression (K-VAE 1.0). The K-VAE 1.0 model, which is essential for training visual content generation models, is the world’s best among open-source equivalents.

Science Award: Expanding the Horizons of Russian Science

In 2025, 290 applications were submitted for the Sber Science Award. The prize fund grew by a third and exceeded 100 million rubles. The award provides an opportunity to continue research and bring the boldest ideas to life. Last year, Russian scientists Roman Solovyov, Sergey Krivovichev, and Boris Alekseev were named laureates in the traditional categories (“Digital Universe,” “Physical World,” and “Life Sciences”). Mikhail Medvedev and Dmitry Penzar were recognized in the “AI in Science” category.

Explore the world of Russian science with Sber

Sber promotes science, making it accessible and engaging. A special landing page has been created just for Science Day, featuring not only the analytical compilation “Science at Sber 2026,” but also lectures by winners of the Sber Science Award and special projects about their research.

Fans of popular science programs can look forward to a special project with the N+1 portal, in which Science Award laureates and Sber researchers participated in the “Non-Standard Model” podcast, the second season of the show “Boundaries of Knowledge” from Sber and Okko, supported by the Institute of Radio Engineering (IRI), as well as the launch of the second season of the “GigaScience” project on RBC, created with the support of Skoltech.

Science enthusiasts will be able to learn how the Green robot handles applied tasks, and how the “AI for Science” platform helps scientists accelerate their research using AI tools.

Sber is offering young scientists the opportunity to participate in a free accelerator program and turn their innovations into real businesses under the guidance of mentors. Those who already have a tech startup can register on the SberUnity venture platform to find investors and customers for their product.