According to a report published last week by US publication Business Insider, a range of western tech firms are users of FindFace, a controversial face recognition technology developed by Russian startup NtechLab. FindFace matches faces against social media accounts, regardless of privacy rights, among other facial recognition capabilities. Its approach is similar to that developed by US …
Microsoft has blocked the installation of the Windows 10 and 11 operating systems in Russia from its official website, Russian users and media reported. Attempts to download the software resulted in a 404 error message, or diverted to a Microsoft Support contact page. Russian users using a VPN can still disguise their computer’s location and thus …
Microsoft blocks installation of Windows OS in Russia Read More
Yesterday SAP announced “further steps” to “support Ukraine” and “plan Russia exit.” As announced in late March, the global enterprise software giant is in the process of shutting down its cloud services in Russia. As part of this process, “we have given non-sanctioned companies in Russia the choice to have their data deleted, sent to them, or migrated …
In further responses from the tech industry to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last week and the country’s continued aggression against its neighbor, Google and Microsoft have both now said they’re pausing sales in Russia. We understand that Google’s pause — which is focused on its own ad sales — began last night and has been …
Google pauses its ad sales in Russia, Microsoft pauses sales Read More
Sber, Russia’s state-controlled financial and digital giant (previously known as Sberbank), and the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech), intend to develop software program to “evaluate the carbon balance drawing on remote sensing of the Earth.” The program aims to “facilitate the comprehensive analysis [which is] required [to make] effective decarbonization decisions and design …
Decarbonization: Russian scientists bet on AI while government sets meagre country goals Read More
As Western powers could restrict supplies of IT equipment and support as part of potential sanctions against Russia, Sber is preparing for all scenarios. Last week, as reported by Kommersant, the state-controlled financial giant conducted technical exercises simulating the interruption of technical support from Microsoft, Nvidia, SAP, VMware and other companies. In a bid to gain more …
How Russian customers of Western IT equipment prepare for potential sanctions Read More
While many internationally-oriented Russian startups move to Silicon Valley, or to such European alternatives as Berlin, London or Riga, Branquad made a different choice. This Russian digital commerce startup recently landed in Lille, a large, tech-friendly city in the North of France. Not only does its case provide yet another example of an International Russian …
From Moscow to Lille, France: This startup changes the way retailers fill product cards Read More
Miro, a US enterprise software publisher with Russian roots, announced yesterday a $400 million Series C round. The deal brought the company — known as RealtimeBoard when it was founded in Russia back in 2011 — to an astounding $17.5 billion post-money valuation. Several other unicorns founded or co-founded by Russian entrepreneurs emerged on the global tech scene over the past years — from Badoo, to Personio, to Veeam Software, …
Baring Vostok, a leading Moscow-based PE/VC firm operating essentially in Russia and neighbouring countries, has invested $13 million in a customer data platform for marketing automation called Mindbox. The terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Forbes Russia reported that Baring had received a minority stake in exchange for its investment, while Mindbix employees were …
Baring Vostok invests $13 million in leading Russian marketing automation company Read More
US open source software platform Grafana Labs has acquired a Russian-founded startup called Amixr. Launched in 2019, this company has developed an incident management platform that allows DevOps and SRE engineers to “optimize channels, recipients, and content” and solve IT problems more rapidly. Grafana Labs provides a monitoring solution for databases, featuring “beautiful, flexible dashboards” to “create, explore and …
Russian-founded incident management tool Amixr acquired by US major Grafana Labs Read More
In late October Kaspersky Lab announced the acquisition of Brain4Net, an SD-WAN and NFV orchestration software developer born in Russia in 2015. “We’re going to significantly boost our cloud security capabilities and XDR offering. The acquisition enables us to develop reliable detection and response capabilities in the ‘cloud-first’ paradigm by delivering our own solutions based …
Kaspersky acquires SDN/NFV software vendor Brain4Net to boost its cloud security business Read More
Last week Jelastic, a multi-cloud Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) company established in Silicon Valley with Russian and Ukrainian roots, announced its acquisition by Seattle-based Virtuozzo. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. Jelastic’s cloud services combine platform and container capacities in a single package for hosting providers, enterprises and developers. Virtuozzo is a leader in virtualization and hyperconverged software: its …
Russian and Ukrainian roots, US exit: Jelastic acquired by Virtuozzo Read More
