“I want to assure you on behalf of the Kremlin and the government of the Russian Federation that Skolkovo is here to stay, it is our strategic course, and there can be no changes there,” the Russian news agency ITAR TASS quoted Sergey Ivanov, the Russian president’s chief of staff, as saying last week.
“Individual scandalous stories with individual personalities are absolutely local and will have no effect on our policy,” Ivanov added, refering to the political and legal troubles that have plagued the tech hub over the past few months.
The giant tech hub – still under completion on the outskirts of Moscow – is to attract “more than 20 billion rubles” (approximately $600 million) from venture funds, Ivanov said at a meeting with key partners of the Skolkovo foundation.
“Fifty-seven venture funds are Skolkovo Foundation investors, and 21 of them are foreign venture funds. I don’t think the figure is too bad, especially considering the fact that the money they are planning to put into Skolkovo projects exceeds 20 billion rubles,” Ivanov said.
About 1,000 high-tech companies have registered resident status in Skolkovo, Ivanov indicated. Among them are dozens of Russian and international tech giants, research institutions and investment funds.
Less corporate funding for Skoltech?
Skolkovo has also received considerable financial support from the Russian government since its launch three years ago.
However, according to an unnamed sources cited by Russian business daily Vedomosti, President Vladimir Putin has canceled the decree introduced by his predecessor, Dmitry Medvedev, that obliged governmental companies to contribute certain amounts to the endowment fund of the Skolkovo Science and Technology Institute (known as Skoltech). The endowment fund was created in January 2012, and during that year, state-owned companies allocated some $122 million (4 billion rubles) to it, Vedomosti’s sources said.
Skoltech was created in a joint effort by Skolkovo and MIT in 2010. The idea behind the endowment fund was to prevent the institute from becoming completely dependent on state financing (which will end in 2015) and private orders.
Vedomosti’s sources pointed out that the decision to eliminate the endowment fund was the result of a number of complaints from state-owned companies, which did not want to pay into Skoltech if they did not expect to receive any rights or benefits from it.
