In late April, Russian venture capital firms Phystech Ventures and North Energy Ventures announced the creation of a joint $40 million fund. Dubbed ‘TF II,’ the fund will focus on mature projects in the fields of artificial intelligence, machine learning and robotics projects, VC.ru reported. Among the 24 investors in the fund are large banks, …
Prisma Labs, the Russian company which made the news in 2016 with an art filter app based inspired by neural networks, has just secured $6 million. The round was led by Haxus, the fund of Belarusian investor Yuri Gursky, which already invested in the company at the seed stage in 2016 – along with Mail.Ru …
Prisma Labs raises $6 million from Belarusian investor to develop new products Read More
Sberbank, the state-controlled financial giant, intends to acquire a 51% stake in Speech Technology Center (STC) from Gazprombank, a financial arm of the Russian gas company. Digital Horizon, a VC and business incubation firm with offices in Moscow and Tel Aviv, has also agreed to acquire a minority stake in STC. After deal completion in …
Sberbank, Gazprombank and Digital Horizon aim to create “global leader” in biometrics Read More
Tech-friendly Russian digital lending giant Tinkoff Bank has developed one of Russia’s most powerful super computers. Named after the eminent Russian mathematician Andrey Kolmogorov, the machine has been ranked 8th in the Top 50 supercomputers in Russia – at the highest place among participating businesses. It boasts the highest per-node performance in Russia (41.9 TFlop per second), according to the ranking. As explained by …
Supercomputer helps Russian digital lender solve AI tasks “hundreds of times faster” Read More
Yandex, the NASDAQ-listed Russian Internet giant, is testing a social service called ‘Yandex.Aura’ (see presentation page). The news was confirmed by Yandex to East-West Digital News after being commented abundantly in Russian media and social networks. However, the company did not specify the planned date of Aura’s public release. Currently, Aura is in beta testing …
Yandex experiments new social service with AI features Read More
Leonid Boguslavsky’s RTP Global has invested $2 million in Dasha.ai, as reported by Russian business daily Vedomosti, based on exchanges with representatives from both sides. Founded just months ago, this Russian startup is building an AI-powered call-center automation solution that allows companies to “design, test and launch rich, human-level voice conversations.” This will help businesses “automate [their] entire …
RTP Global injects $2 million in Russian AI call-center automation technology Read More
A UK-based startup with Eastern European connections is leveraging personality analysis, data analysis and machine learning to make marketing communications even more persuasive. And it has just raised $5.2 million to develop and commercialize its technology further. DataSine’s flagship product, ‘Pomegranate,’ helps businesses “tailor content to resonate with their audience, from the segment level down …
DataSine aims to make the science of “digital mass persuasion” available to marketers Read More
BeMyEye, a UK-based provider of “crowdsourced perfect store data,” has acquired StreetBee, a Russian startup that has developed fast data collection and processing solutions for retail. The terms of what seems to be an all-stock deal have not been disclosed, but an unnamed source told Russian business daily Kommersant that StreetBee’s shareholders will receive a …
UK store data solution provider BeMyEye acquires Russian StreetBee Read More
Nearly one year after Yandex launched its AI-driven voice assistant Alice, two other major players are preparing to release their own intelligent assistants. Competition is coming from Yandex’s archrival Mail.Ru Group, which is reportedly developing a concept combining a voice assistant and a smart speaker. Dubbed ‘Marusya,’ this product is being designed for potential integration …
‘Alice,’ ‘Marusya,’ ‘Oleg:’ Voice assistants and smart speakers take off in Russia Read More
Waves, a Blockchain solutions developer founded by a Russian team and incorporated in Switzerland, has secured $120 million to develop its project Vostok. Designed for large enterprises and public institutions, this private blockchain platform “lies at the intersection of several disruptive technologies, including blockchain, Big Data, artificial intelligence and the industrial Internet-of-Things,” according to Waves founder Alexander (Sasha) Ivanov. …
Last week Yandex, the NASDAQ-listed Russian search giant, announced the release of its first branded smartphone, Yandex.Phone. Priced at 17,990 rubles (around $270), this Chinese-made device weighs in a relatively modest range of smartphones. Still, it is overpriced according to mobile phone resellers, if considering its unimpressive design and speed. But this device distinguishes itself by …
Yandex launches own-branded, AI-powered smartphone in Russia Read More
Note: This story has been updated following new elements brought by one of Teleport’s founders Snapchat has hired some of the best developers of Teleport, a startup launched by tech entrepreneurs from Ukraine, Estonia and Russia. The US company is also said to have acquired the processing image technology developed by this company, which claims it …
Snapchat reportedly buys Teleport’s technology, woos its best developers Read More
