In late March Moscow startup Briskly raised $3 million from Maxim Poletaev and Gauss Ventures alongside two unnamed new investors. Poletaev, a former Sber executive, and Gauss, a Cayman-based fund with Russian connections, backed Briskly from the very beginning, with a $370,000 injection in 2019. The deal came just five months after a previous $2 million round — and is preceding a new …
Yandex Music announces today The Sound of Stars, a playlist of audio compositions celebrating the 60th anniversary of the first human flight into space. To create the playlist, the Yandex Music team used algorithms to convert the physical properties of stars, pulsars and galaxies into music, with each of the nine tracks dedicated to a …
‘The Sound of Stars:’ Yandex Music uses algorithms to turn cosmic bodies into art Read More
Sber, the state-controlled financial and digital giant, and RVC (Russian Venture Company, now affiliated to the sovereign wealth fund RDIF) yesterday announced plans to launch a joint $100 million fund for early-stage tech startups. This is a substantial amount for Russia, where annual domestic venture investment volumes are in the hundreds of millions of US dollars. The fund will …
Russia’s internet regulator Roskomnadzor has extended the deadline until May 15 for Twitter to delete content the government objects to or face a ban, the watchdog said on April 6. The state information agency said that it would not block Twitter if it deletes posts relating to pornography and suicide instructions amongst other things. However, …
Kremlin gives Twitter another month to comply with content removal demands Read More
A Moscow court has fined TikTok 2.6 million rubles (some $34,000 at the current exchange rate) for refusing to delete information encouraging teenagers to join an unauthorized street protest in Moscow on January 24, TASS reported. At that time, Russian social network aficionados, including millions of teenagers, had transformed TikTok into a digital rebellion hotspot. “Navalny stay alive,” “Putin’s …
TikTok fined $34,000 for not removing posts on unauthorized street protests in Moscow Read More
In late March Sber, the state-controlled financial and digital giant previously known as Sberbank, took control of a Russian video creation startup called Movika. Sber announced its subsidiary Digital Assets acquired a 58% stake in Movika and could increase it to 80% in the future. The amount of the deal was not disclosed. Movika’s technology allows …
A pool of individual investors has put 431 million rubles (around $5.6 million at the current exchange rate) in Beri Zaryad, a Moscow-based smartphone charging service. As reported by Forbes, the investors include Alexander Kabatov, Valery Ivanov, Bogdan Leonov and Alla Merman. The funding has been split as follows: 102 million rubles in capital injection …
Russian investors put millions in smartphone service startups Read More
A new Russian tech billionaire emerged last week on the NASDAQ with the SPAC-enabled listing of Arrival, a company touted as a game-changer in the electric car industry. Born 42 years ago in the Soviet republic of Georgia, Denis Sverlov founded in first company — an ERP integrator called IT Vision — in 2000, immediately after graduating the …
This former Russian deputy minister is now worth $10 billion after NASDAQ IPO Read More
Swedish fintech player Digital Alliance AB and Russia’s QIWI Group have launched a new solution based on advanced SoftPOS technology. Initially launched in Russia under the brand ‘tap2go,’ the service will be made available on other markets in the course of 2021. The new service enables end users to accept card payments directly on their mobile devices, …
The board of the Artificial Intelligence Alliance met in late March in Moscow, providing updates about this organization created by large Russian companies 2019. An investment platform will be launched to “consolidate the AI project and idea pipeline” and provide participating companies with access to the corporate accelerators of the members. Dubbed ‘AI-Hub,’ this platform will also “allow …
Russia’s AI Alliance launches training programs, contests and an investment platform Read More
On April 8, the online fair ‘Your Next Move: Spotlight on the Baltics‘ will highlight the region’s fast-growing tech ecosystem and its opportunities for international talents, including from Russian-speaking countries. This online event aims to position Latvia, in particular, as a first-choice destination to build a professional carrier or do business within a number of companies, from …
New remote opportunities in the Baltics for tech talents worldwide (online fair, April 8) Read More
While Russian authorities have in recent months ramped up pressure on foreign social media and video hosting platforms, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said today he hopes Russia will not be forced to block them. “No one wants a full ban and it would be silly to advocate for one, but it’s necessary to force these …
