New AI club will bestow nuclear-like power on the winners, Russia's top AI executive says

Artificial intelligence will bestow vast influence on a par with nuclear weapons to those countries who are able to lead the technology, giving them superiority in the 21st Century, one of Russia's top AI executives told Reuters.

Alexander Vedyakhin, First Deputy CEO of Sberbank, which has evolved from a traditional lender into a technology conglomerate focused on AI, said it was an achievement that Russia ranks among seven countries with home-grown AI technologies.

"AI is like a nuclear project. A new 'nuclear club' is emerging globally, where either you have your own national large language model (LLM) or you don't," Vedyakhin said in an interview at Russia's flagship annual AI Journey event.


He said Russia must have at least two or three original AI models, not "retrained foreign models," for use in sensitive areas such as online public services, healthcare and education.

"It is impossible to upload confidential information into a foreign model. It is simply prohibited. Doing so would lead to very unpleasant consequences," Vedyakhin said, adding that only Russian models should handle state data.

President Vladimir Putin last week said home-grown AI models were vital to preserving Russian sovereignty. Sberbank and technology firm Yandex are leading Russia's effort to catch up with U.S. and Chinese rivals.

Vedyakhin acknowledged that Russia would struggle to match leaders in computing power, especially due to Western sanctions limiting access to technology, and said the gap was likely to grow.

He warned that current energy consumption levels make returns on AI investment "either very distant or not visible at all," cautioning against "overheated hype" around AI infrastructure spending.

"We believe that excessive investments in AI infrastructure may indeed fail to pay off, given the rapid pace of technological development," he said, adding that Russia was immune to an "AI bubble" because its investment was not excessive.