AI Journey 2025
Ahead of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), top experts spoke about current AI trends during the AI Journey regional track. The conference and a foresight session with researchers from Russia, China, India, Serbia, Brazil, Azerbaijan, South Africa, Cuba, Chile, Belarus, and other countries took place at Sber’s TechHub in St. Petersburg on June 16.
Vice Governor of St. Petersburg Vladimir Knyagin, Senior Vice President and Head of Technological Development at Sberbank Andrey Belevtsev, and Chairman of Sberbank’s Northwestern Bank Dmirtry Sukhoverov opened the session. All the speakers said that AI was rapidly changing the world, opening up new opportunities for businesses and the average user.
Andrey Belevtsev, senior vice president, head of Technological Development, Sberbank:
“Today, we have experts from 15 countries with us, so the regional stage of AI Journey has become an international one. It is symbolic that it takes place in the same week as the SPIEF, as we also unite the global community to shape the AI agenda. Countries should cooperate to make AI technology benefit the entire planet and people. I am sure that the results of our event will have practical significance for the development of artificial intelligence in different economic sectors.”
Vice President and Director of AI and ML Development at Sberbank Maхim Yeremenko spoke about the future of GenAI and its impact on society, giving examples of promising foreign and domestic AI solutions, some of which are being developed at Sber.
Head of Sberbank’s High-Potential AI Technology Development Semyon Budenny, Ph.D in Physics and Mathematics, talked about the use of GenAI in sports. In soccer, this technology helps to identify the potential of soccer players and gives recommendations on their development. He spoke about the AI model that was developed in partnership with Sberbank and AIRI and is currently being tested at PFC CSKA.
Emil Shakirov, head of GigaChat alignment at Sberbank, shared his vision of the development of Russian-speaking artificial intelligence. He explained how a neural network learns to better understand the context and preferences of users, becoming a useful assistant.
Ivan Kuzmin, director of Sberbank’s B2C Data and Recommender Systems, presented key trends in recommender systems. These include universal models that can address multiple hands-on issues simultaneously, integration of large language models (LLMs) to understand how the world works, and the shift from meeting users’ current needs to keeping them engaged for the long term.
Other Russian and international researchers also presented their reports. Dr. Haowen Hou from Guangdong Artificial Intelligence and Digital Economy Laboratory, China, presented promising architectural solutions for next-generation language models that can fundamentally change human interaction with AI. Professor Neelakandan Subramani fromthe Smart Neurocognitive Knowledge and Data Intelligence Research Lab presented an innovative method for processing neural signals powered by GenAI. The technology decodes the user’s cognitive signals in real time, opening up new opportunities in medicine. Associate Professor Nebojša Bačanin from Singidunum University, Serbia, demonstrated a unique symbiosis of AI and metaheuristic optimization, which significantly improves the efficiency of cyber threat detection and anomaly prediction in complex systems.
As part of AI Journey, Sber traditionally holds AI sessions in different cities across Russia. This year, in addition to St. Petersburg, sessions were held in Nizhny Novgorod and will be held in Vladivostok, Kazan, and the federal territory of Sirius. The schedule of events is available on the conference website; there you will also find recordings of the online streams.
AI Journey is an annual conference organized by Sber, bringing together leading AI professionals to discuss cutting-edge AI designs, their impact on scientific achievements, economic development, social life, and the promotion of innovative technology among young people. Last year’s event featured over 200 speakers from 19 countries, including Russia, India, and China.
