A working group called "AI Support Measures" - made up of IT company representatives, industry association experts, and federal and regional government officials - has backed a request for state or private funding to develop domestic AI chips and accelerators, Vedomosti reports.

The money, around 15 billion rubles, would go to developers of AI chips, accelerators, and servers built on them. The goal is to produce a prototype competitor to Nvidia's products by 2030.

Eligible recipients would cover research and development, prototype creation, testing, and software adaptation. The Industry and Trade Ministry could oversee the subsidies, with the Digital Development and Finance Ministries named as co-executors in the protocol. Support would be formalized through a separate government decree or by amending existing rules for subsidizing electronics development.

Several Russian manufacturers already have groundwork in place: Baikal Electronics (Baikal-AI), the Module Research and Development Center with its NeuroMatrix architecture, and HiTech with solutions for running pre-trained neural networks.

Baikal Electronics CEO Andrey Evdokimov agreed that HiTech has so far achieved the best results among Russian AI chip developers. He cited compatibility with Nvidia's CUDA software ecosystem as an advantage of his own company's work, and said that if the project receives funding, prototypes would be shown in 2028.

Earlier reports said the Industry and Trade Ministry demanded additional expert review of Russian Irtysh processors intended for critical information infrastructure, suspecting the "development" is a complete copy of China's Loongson chip.

Source: Lenta.RU