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#AI

[1/2] Artificial Intelligence Almanac, Issue 14: AI Index Russia 2024 (Category AI)

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I read issue 14 of the AI almanac with great interest. It comes from the AI Competence Center at MIPT, the university I graduated from long ago. I have followed these reports since the first issue. They give a useful broad picture of academic activity and the players in Russia’s market. This report says it may be the last in the series, without explaining why. It appeared relatively recently, in September 2025, but covers the preceding year, 2024.

📄 Methodology

  • Data sources: international open databases, government registers and industry analytics platforms, supplemented by the aiRussia.online map of AI companies and the university ranking at rating.a-ai.ru.
  • Coverage and collection: the index covers research, business, startups, government support and education, with industry and regional breakdowns. Data comes from publications and conferences, companies’ revenues, segments and deals, and government funding and tenders. Expert surveys were also used: the university ranking, for example, surveyed 170 companies and around 10 000 students.

🧠 Research and publications

  • International ranking: Russia rose to 12th worldwide in AI publication count for 2020–2024. China leads with more than 69 thousand papers over 5 years; Russian researchers published more than 2.8 thousand.
  • A conferences: Russian authors presented 125 papers at top-tier A conferences in 2024.
  • Leading research centers: AIRI, Skoltech, HSE University and MIPT accounted for around 46% of Russian presentations at A* conferences in 2024.

🤑 The AI market

  • Market size: Russia’s AI market reached approximately ₽1.15 trillion in 2024, up around 28% from 2023.
  • Technology mix: natural-language processing accounts for about 61% of the market, and business data analytics for around 34%. All other technologies combined, including computer vision, robotics and generative models, account for less than 5%.
  • Companies and segments: around 540 companies worked in AI in 2024. By company count, the leading areas were computer vision, with around 81 companies, business analytics with 68, and medicine with 60. Many operate across several niches; aiRussia.online provides a detailed map.
  • Regions: the business is highly concentrated geographically. Moscow and its surrounding region account for around 70% of AI companies, followed by St. Petersburg at roughly 10% and Tatarstan at about 3%. Tatarstan moved into 3rd place in 2024. Other regions remain well behind in active project counts.

📈 Startups and investment

  • Venture deals: investment in Russian AI startups was around $39 million in 2024, compared with $10 million in 2023. The market began recovering from its downturn but remained far below its record 2021 levels.
  • Mergers and acquisitions: 11 AI-startup M&A deals in 2024 totaled around $33 million, substantially below the previous year’s $148 million. Activity picked up in 2025 as large IT groups resumed acquiring AI developers.
  • Funding stages: most investment went to later rounds. Around 90% of funding in 2024 went to Series B+ or later-stage projects. Seed funding’s share fell to 3%, and Series A to 7%; almost half involved M&A equity purchases. For the second year, the market faced a shortage of early-stage investment and dependence on later-stage funding.

The remaining points are in the next post.

#AI #Engineering #Software #Economics #Whitepaper #ML #Future #Career