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The St. Petersburg International Economic Forum – 2026, taking place from June 3–6, has included a special business dialogue with the United Arab Emirates in its program. UAE Minister of Economy Abdulla Bin Touq Al Marri has confirmed his participation. The dialogue between Russia and the UAE is currently taking place at the highest level, and business interaction is becoming increasingly intensive. First Deputy Chairman of the Board of Sberbank Alexander Vedyakhin discusses what this means for the technology track.
How do you assess the prospects for cooperation with the UAE?
For us, the UAE is an important partner in the Middle East. It is a country with a very strong technological agenda, a high level of digitalization, and a great focus on artificial intelligence.
Today, we primarily view the UAE as a platform for technological dialogue and expertise exchange. Our partners are interested in areas where our competencies can be useful: artificial intelligence, digital platforms, fintech, cybersecurity, and team building.
At the same time, we approach such matters very pragmatically. Any partnership must be technologically substantive, comply with regulatory requirements, and have clear value for both sides. It is in this logic that we are ready to develop further interaction with partners from the UAE.
Last year, you participated in the largest technology events in UAE – GITEX and ICOMP. How do you assess that experience?
At GITEX Global in Dubai, we had a booth showcasing advanced products and solutions. Visitors learned about the capabilities of the GigaChat neural network model for business and the GigaStudio service for generating websites and landing pages, engaged in Kandinsky interactive real-time image creation, and discovered the capabilities of the SymFormer model, which allows for the creation of music tracks, including vocals in Arabic. This is very important because interaction with the local language and culture is essential for promoting an AI product in the UAE. Our partners – the AIRI Institute and the CRT Group of Companies – also presented a number of B2B and B2G developments.
In Abu Dhabi, at the International Conference on Computational Optimization ICOMP 2025, Sber held a session dedicated to the latest trends in artificial intelligence (AI). We discussed advanced data processing and deep learning methods for solving complex practical problems. Additionally, at our booth, guests learned about the TSForesight library for forecasting multivariate time series and the Ride framework, which helps accelerate the search for shortest routes in complex graphs such as urban transport networks. Also on display were the LightAutoDS-Tab multi-agent system for automating machine learning on tabular data and the 3MDBench medical benchmark, created to evaluate the telemedicine capabilities of language models.
As a technology company, Sber actively participates in shaping the future of technology and innovation, offering advanced solutions and products based on the latest achievements in artificial intelligence, big data analytics, and process automation.
These are undoubtedly landmark events that bring together industry leaders from around the world. We see immense benefit in participation, not only from the perspective of studying best practices and being among the first to hear from leading global speakers, but also for promoting Russian developments on the international stage and enhancing Russia’s authority and position in the technological race.
Are projects from the UAE also actively participating in technology events in Russia?
Last year, the sixth wave of the Sber500 accelerator received over 1,900 applications from 42 countries worldwide. Indeed, the UAE was among the top 5 countries by number of applications, alongside India, Brazil, and Kazakhstan.
But the main point is not even the quantity, but the quality. Six out of the 25 finalists of the accelerator were international teams, including startups from the UAE. They underwent a rigorous selection process: first a two-week bootcamp for 150 teams, then a seven-week accelerator with international mentors from 17 countries. So, we are already nurturing joint projects through the innovation community.
Sber is already collaborating on GigaChat with many countries. Do you see the possibility of partnering with Arabic language models to create bilingual services?
This possibility certainly looks promising. We see that the development of large language models will increasingly proceed not only through competition between individual solutions but also through their adaptation to the languages, cultures, and applied tasks of specific markets.
For GigaChat, the international direction is interesting precisely in this logic, and the UAE is no exception. The key here is not just to translate a model from one language to another but to ensure quality in understanding context, terminology, regulatory requirements, and cultural specifics.
Such solutions require serious technological, legal, and partnership groundwork. But as a direction for dialogue with partners from the UAE, it is certainly of interest to us. For Sber, it is important that such initiatives have clear practical value and can be scaled into real products.
