Skolkovo (VEB Group.Russia) announces the selection of pilot projects in the field of artificial intelligence. In 2024, promising AI projects will receive support in the amount of 554 million rubles. The program is implemented within the framework of the federal Artificial Intelligence project of the national project "Digital Economy of the Russian Federation" and is aimed at facilitating the pilot implementation of domestic AI solutions in priority sectors of the economy. The national project is supervised by Dmitry Chernyshenko, Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation. The curator of the federal project is the Ministry of Economic Development of Russia.

The amount of grants will range from 20 to 100 million rubles. It is planned to support projects of Russian companies implementing AI to transform technological or business processes. To receive a grant, projects must be pilot projects and involve the use of artificial intelligence technologies in production, operational activities or in the work of the services provided.

"For the state, first of all, it is important that financial support for promising projects becomes more accessible. This makes it possible to ensure the introduction of technologies in a wide range of industries. Artificial intelligence remains one of the most important tools for improving the efficiency of Russian enterprises and the development of economic sectors," said Maxim Kolesnikov, Deputy Minister of Economic Development of the Russian Federation.

"The introduction of artificial intelligence is the most important direction for improving the efficiency of economic sectors and achieving technological sovereignty. The WEB Group.The Russian Federation, in cooperation with the Government, is constantly improving support mechanisms for development companies. We expect that in 2024, with the help of such grants, we will support the most competitive and promising solutions," the chairman of VEB stressed.Russian Federation Igor Shuvalov.

This year, the list of documents required to receive financial support will be reduced. The changes will also affect the participation of small technology companies. They will receive additional points when evaluating the application as part of a competitive selection process and will no longer be limited to revenue of 2 billion rubles.

"For developers belonging to the number of small technology companies (MTK), there will be advantages in the assessment. They will receive additional points as part of the competitive selection and an increased threshold for the allowable amount of revenue," commented Igor Drozdov, Chairman of the Board of the Skolkovo Foundation.

Last year, 17 companies implementing domestic solutions in the field of artificial intelligence for digital business transformation received financial support from Skolkovo. The amount of grants amounted to more than 800 million rubles. Among the developments are a system for intelligent modeling of postal logistics processes, a quality control platform for the production of gas turbine engine blades, a system for predicting the ice situation in the Arctic zone, an analytical system for the walking of tires of motor vehicles, an AI platform for solving problems of organic and medical chemistry, and others.

The Federal Artificial Intelligence Project of the National Digital Economy Project has been developed to implement the National Strategy for the Development of Artificial Intelligence until 2030. One of the key tasks is the large–scale introduction of such technologies into various sectors of the economy and the social sphere of Russia to improve the quality of life of the population, ensure technological sovereignty and achieve global leadership of the country in the field of AI by 2030.

*Support for entrepreneurs of the Yaroslavl region is carried out within the framework of the national project "Small and medium-sized entrepreneurship and support for individual entrepreneurial initiative", which was initiated by the President and overseen by First Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Belousov.