Skolkovo and Skoltech: “We keep forgetting that we are no longer the USSR”

The Skolkovo Foundation and Skoltech have been losing foreign customers since spring, and new sanctionsworsened the situation. Western clients allowed them to build competencies, and, for example,

In early August, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the US Treasuryincluded the Skolkovo Foundation, the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech) and the Skolkovo Technopark on the SDN sanctions list. The decision noted that the fund operates an innovation center, which since its inception has focused on supporting the development of technologies, including those that will allow RUSSIA to maintain its defensive capabilities and are used to ensure national security. In addition, the Rosoboronexport office is located in the Skolkovo Innovation Center. With regard to Skoltech, it was indicated that the Russian defense sector had been sponsoring it for many years, including the Uralvagonzavod, the United Aircraft Corporation (UAC), the Sozvezdie concern, Almaz-Antey, etc., which are under sanctions, and others. In partnership with individual With similar enterprises, Skoltech developed composite materials for tanks, engines for ships, etc.

About how expected the sanctions were and how they will affect the Skolkovo Foundation and Skoltech, in an interview with RBC, said the HEAD of the fund, Igor Drozdov, and the rector of the institute, Alexander Kuleshov.

“We feel the consequences, although we didn’t fully feel it”

— What fundamentally changed for you on August 2? Were you afraid of being included in SDN, did you prepare for this?

Igor Drozdov: Fundamentally, the sanctions do not affect us in any way. All the functions that we previously performed, we continue to perform in full. They affect the transactions that we had with foreign counterparties. For example, we developed technology search programs in Russia to meet the needs of our foreign partners. Obviously, now they will not work with us and we will provide such a service only to Russian companies. Foreign companies accounted for less than 10% of the total volume of customers of acceleration programs, although earlier their share was significantly higher. Many companies from the so-called unfriendly countries refused to work in March.

In the first quarter, the number of applicants for Skolkovo resident status also seriously decreased (gives tax and customs preferences to companies that have received it; grant support, access to Skolkovo services, etc. -), but in the second quarter it not only recovered, but turned out to be close to a record value: 190 new residents appeared (in the first - 130). And, according to preliminary estimates, the total revenue of Skolkovo resident companies for the first half of the year grew by about 15%. The volume of attracted investments increased by the same amount.

Alexander Kuleshov: We hoped that we would not be included in the sanctions list, but we certainly expected this. OFAC's motivation was strange. We definitely did not have any work with the defense industry, security, secrecy. And this is understandable: it is impossible to transfer the work related to such areas to an organization in which half of the employees are foreigners or repatriates.

We feel the consequences, although we have not fully felt them. In the spring, we lost a dozen and a half commercial contracts with Philips, Bosch, TopCon and other American and European companies. The loss of a number of foreign contracts will affect revenue. And if in the spring I said that ties with MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. -) remain on a personal level, now the MIT professional community has received a circular prohibiting any work with Russian scientists. Let's see how it will be implemented. So far, we have had a huge number of publications with MIT.

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— Has the number of foreigners among the industrial partners of the foundation, teachers and students at Skoltech decreased? What was their share before February?

Igor Drozdov:A significant part of foreign industrial partners froze relations back in March. Companies with this status must either finance research activities on the territory of Skolkovo, or look for some technologies among our startups, be a customer of acceleration programs, etc. For example, the German manufacturer of electrical equipment Phoenix Contact built a research center on the territory of the Innovation Center and after the announcement about leaving the Russian market, handed it over to a local partner. Boeing, Panasonic, Schneider Electric, and others had such research centers. But for a long time, we have significantly more Russian partners than foreign ones, and, frankly, for startups, not only in the past six months, but even before, Russian companies were more valuable clients.

Among residents, 80% of companies operate exclusively on the Russian market, that is, the current situation does not concern them. The rest in the vast majority work in the markets of friendly countries. But even if they worked in Western countries, since we are not founders, we have no control over the residents, the sanctions against the Skolkovo Fund formally should not affect them. An innovation center is an infrastructure, a professional community, a territory; the fund is a management company that provides resident status. In cases where the fund is a grantmaker or there is some other relationship, the position of our residents is no different from the position of clients who store their funds or interact with sanctioned banks. If they encounter in foreign markets refusal to conduct transactions, refusal to cooperate, I am sure, in most cases, this will not be due to the fact that they are residents of the Innovation Center, but to general country risks. And besides, the majority of residents working in foreign markets have “daughters”, “sisters” and other legal entities created under foreign law, which have nothing to do with the Skolkovo innovation center, they are not its residents.

Alexander Kuleshov:I received several letters of resignation from teachers. Those who have American passports - it doesn’t matter if this is the only passport or a second one, for example, to the Russian one; in many ways it is even useless to persuade, because for them it is personal risks. A person can get five years, and they can twist it not only in the usa, but also in other countries. Most of our teachers know Russian, but many of them are those who went abroad some time ago, taught at Western universities and returned back with an American or European passport. That is, the losses will definitely be, how dramatic - we'll see. For example, I know Russian professors with an American passport who have decided to give it up. Another thing is that, unfortunately, this is a complex procedure that will drag on for months, years.

About 20% of students are foreigners. The other day I met with two students from the USA, I did not know what to say to them. Nobody understands their legal status - what will happen if a person graduated from a university that is under sanctions. How will this affect his future career, prospects? Time will show.

What the Skolkovo Foundation and Skoltech do

The non-profit organization Development Fund of the Skolkovo Center for the Development and Commercialization of New Technologies, the managing company of the Skolkovo Innovation Center, provides various services necessary for technology companies to develop: it conducts technology scouting, expertise of innovative projects, mentoring and training startups, helps to obtain patents for intellectual property in Russia and abroad, provides customs brokerage services, provides startups with access to research and other infrastructure, etc. In addition, it acts as an operator of several grant programs: together with the Ministry of Digital Development, it supports the first industrial implementation of the developments of small and medium-sized companies, financing up to 80% customer costs; issues grants to design centers in the field of microelectronics;

Last year, the revenue of the Skolkovo Fund, according to SPARK, amounted to 1.27 billion rubles, net profit - 383.8 million rubles. The revenue of the residents of the Skolkovo innovation center for the same period is 247.8 billion rubles. As of May 1 this year, the number of startups-residents of Skolkovo exceeded 3.3 thousand.

The autonomous, non-profit educational organization of higher education, the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech), was founded in 2011 in partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which helped create and implement programs in the field of education, research and entrepreneurship. In addition to educational and research activities, Skoltech provides services for the development of technologies or products for various customers. Last year, the amount of attracted funding amounted to 2.466 billion rubles, it includes grants and commercial industrial contracts with companies such as Gazprom Neft, HUAWEI, Russian Railways.

According to SPARK, Skoltech's revenue for the past year was 969.2 million rubles, net profit was 359.8 million rubles.

“No one gave us anything special”

- Will the termination of cooperation with any of the foreign partners be really sensitive for you in terms of revenue?

Igor Drozdov: No.

Alexander Kuleshov:The financial aspect is not the only one; in the process of working with foreign partners, we increased our competencies. Working with the end user, the customer, you do not invent abstract conditions of the problem, its formulation, which really worries your client. It is very important. For Philips, Bosch and TopCon mentioned above, we developed technologies and software. Now there are eastern clients, although some of them refused to cooperate after European and American ones. And unfortunately, you will not find a Philips-class customer in Russia. In terms of medicine, the US and Europe are on a completely different level than Eastern or Russian companies. The entire medical world, especially large companies, Philips, General Electric, Toshiba, Siemens, which do imaging, that is, CT, MRI - everything that we have encountered recently, develop means of automatic diagnostics. So that the image can automatically determine whether the patient has cancer, covid, or something else. This is a huge field of various tasks. We are actively working in this direction, we have a joint venture with Sber - SberMedII, which is engaged in image recognition using artificial intelligence. Previously, we had the opportunity to offer these solutions for the Western market, now - alas.

- Will you adjust your plans in connection with the sanctions?

Igor Drozdov: We started adjusting our plans and tasks right after February 24th. At the current moment, it is especially important to assist our economy in gaining technological sovereignty. So we focused on a few things. We are actively developing the R&D-service platform, on which companies can order a service from Russian universities for the manufacture of a prototype, testing or reengineering (rethinking what is now impossible to find on the market. -). For six months, orders for 700 million rubles were placed on the platform. By the end of the year, I think, there will be significantly more than 1 billion rubles, and next year we expect a multiple increase. This is, in fact, a search for research potential within the country, taking into account existing restrictions.

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The second area is support and scaling of technologies that already exist, have been tested, are in working condition, as well as support for companies that are now actively growing in revenue and need to expand production. We are discussing dozens of projects with the Industrial Development Fund and VEB that are applying for debt financing totaling more than 30 billion rubles. Judging by the way the process is going, many of the applicants will receive the necessary resource. We work closely with the SME corporation: about 40% of companies that have now received preferential loans at 3% are Skolkovo residents. As part of the pilot implementation financing program, we are trying not just to assemble a “customer-technology owner” pair, but a consortium. If you need to replace the complex product of a big-name company leaving the market, like SAP and Oracle, with one developer, usually difficult to deal with. We need to assemble a consortium of developers, as well as a consortium of customers.

The third direction is assistance in restoring or reorganizing supply chains. Not everything is made from Russian components, and many companies and startups are faced with the fact that some elements that they purchased in European countries have become unavailable. We help to find analogues in friendly countries and bring them.

— Are these consortiums some kind of legal structure, a new company or what?

Igor Drozdov: This is an assembly of a team in the broad sense of the word, which will ensure the production of the final product on a serial scale. To do this, it is necessary to take into account the interests of all participants, and the more there are, the more difficult it is to do this. The organizational and legal structure can be different - somewhere a separate legal entity, which will include several partners, somewhere there are contractual ties between companies. Skoltech is a key developer in a number of projects, a chief designer, if you like, while Skolkovo plays an organizational role, making business connections. For example, in the field of telecom, we are closely cooperating with Skoltech on a project to create base stations for 4G and 5G mobile communications (fourth and fifth generations. -). There are a number of other projects, but I don't want to name them until the necessary documents are signed.

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— Our sources said that one of these consortiums is being created in the field of cybersecurity with the participation of VEB. This is true?

Igor Drozdov: No comment.

— Who will choose directions for creating consortiums, is there any list?

Igor Drozdov: There is no clear algorithm, but we are not in an airless space, we participate in various events, we look at what the state needs, in what areas we can be useful. These can be consortiums built on market principles, if all participants have agreed among themselves and laid down a business model. Somewhere, state support will be needed: concessional financing, a grant or a subsidy.

- Other companies have similar projects: for example, Rostec is making Cybertech, a consortium in the field of microelectronics and equipment creation. Do you see competition?

Igor Drozdov: There is no contradiction. We roughly know who is doing what, and do not strive to sit on one chair. And there are certain areas where, on the contrary, the state is interested in having two players, so that there is competition.

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- Recently, Kommersant wrote that sanctions could complicate the development of 5G and 6G equipment, which Skoltech is currently engaged in. This is true?

Alexander Kuleshov: No. I don't see any particular problems in terms of development. Legally, we have lost quite a lot, but from a practical point of view, there is no trouble. Access to the latest technologies, industrial equipment was closed to us not after the start of a special military operation, in fact, it was not there for all the years of the existence of the Russian Federation. No one really supplied us with anything, and since the fall and even since the summer of last year, we have received continuous refusals to supply any equipment at all.

— At what stage is the development of 5G equipment now?

Alexander Kuleshov: Skoltech, using funds from the NTI Foundation (National Technology Initiative. -) and its own commercial funds, developed a prototype 5G base station and tested it in operator laboratories in Moscow and St. Petersburg , both successfully. So far, the main functionality has actually been implemented, but it works fine: on tests, the speed is significantly more than 1 Gb / s and reaches 1.5 Gb / s, which corresponds to foreign analogues. By the end of the year, we plan to build a mixed test site on the territory of Skolkovo, where our 5G base stations and stations from one of the well-known vendors will operate simultaneously, which will allow us to work out a realistic deployment scenario in the Russian operator's network.

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“Switching to 6G bypassing 5G will not work”

- From which countries and what components for startups does the Skolkovo Foundation help to import? When the sanctions were first introduced, experts predicted an increase in the cost of goods imported by parallel imports and a deterioration in their quality. Do you agree with this?

Igor Drozdov: We do not buy any consumer goods in huge quantities, these are specific things for technology companies. And by specific, I mean not something cunning, dual-purpose, but components that are needed to make a prototype, a small series, conduct tests, etc. Let me emphasize that the import of these goods does not violate the law, we ensure that all necessary permits for their movement are obtained. This is a rather narrow task, the question of cost and quality is irrelevant in this case. In some cases, we help to reduce the cost of supplying goods needed by our residents through the implementation of state support to reimburse the costs of paying customs duties.

For us, the priority markets for cooperation at the moment are CHINA , and in the short term India. Plus the EAEU countries, but we perceive them more as a sales market. To a lesser extent, Turkey and the UAE, but these are rather logistics hubs at the moment.

- Do you expect any difficulties with the purchase of these piece items after the imposition of sanctions?

Igor Drozdov: Time will tell, but with a high probability we will continue to carry out in full what we did before. There are some point problems, but we know how to deal with them.

Who is now in charge of the Skolkovo Foundation and Skoltech? How are the tasks formulated? Do you expect to be given new tasks?

Igor Drozdov: The chairman of the board of directors is [the head of VEB] Igor Shuvalov, and in this sense we are in close cooperation with the state corporation. There are curators from various departments - we are responsible to them for subsidies and joint projects. These are the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Industry, the Ministry of Digital Development. We are also included in the state program under the Ministry of Economic Development, there are certain indicators that we must achieve, in this sense we are responsible to this ministry. Each of the curators formulates his tasks, they are described in the contracts, but the general strategic directions of the fund's activities are formulated by the board of directors.

The tasks described above are things that we have done before, but now they have received a new sound. The main task of Skolkovo is to look for projects of different levels of maturity and promote them so that they serve the economy. This task remains. Methods are somewhat refined and updated.

Alexander Kuleshov:The governing body of Skoltech is the Board of Trustees, there are no more curators. We formulate the tasks ourselves and approve them at the board of trustees. And I can say quite firmly that we confirm that our tasks do not change, and we will do everything that we have planned. With difficulties, and now there are more of them, but we will do it. One of the tasks is the development of 5G and 6G equipment. And I would also like to say that what was recently written about - that Skoltech, together with the Radio Research Institute, asked for 30 billion rubles. on the development of 6G is complete nonsense (we are talking about the publication of Kommersant on July 26. -. And from the text of the article everyone picked up the stupid idea that it is possible to switch to 6G bypassing 5G. Those who wrote about this 6G project do not understand at all the essence of the subject.Firstly, this is only the first phase of research, and secondly, our institute has specific research tasks to develop the key components of the 6G base station. In addition, this is complete nonsense in terms of staging: switching to 6G bypassing 5G will not work. Simply because in mobile communication, the new generation is an incremental technological improvement of the existing standard.

— But you requested money for the development of 6G?

Alexander Kuleshov: Not really. We are doing some things in photonics, architecture, algorithms and coding without which 6G will definitely not be possible. Skoltech didn't ask directly.

- If you take up the development of the 6G standard in Russia, what will you need for this?

Alexander Kuleshov: This is a global standard, you can participate in this work if you are allowed. With admission, the story is very complicated. To have a voice in the standards committee, you must first sit in it as an observer, and then make a contribution to the development, which will be accepted. When I was the DIRECTOR of the A.A. Kharkevich Institute for Information Transmission Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences, our employees, in particular [now senior vice president for development at Skoltech, and previously deputy director of the Institute for Information Transmission Problems] Alexander Safonov, were members of the committee with the right to vote . But all these standards committees are actually a battlefield between giants - Samsung, Huawei, Ericsson, etc. Individual countries are not visible there.

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- What is missing to contribute to the development of technology, money?

Alexander Kuleshov: To make a contribution, you need brains, qualifications.

- Will the current geopolitical situation somehow affect the work in the standard committee?

Alexander Kuleshov: Well, what are the standards committees like now? We, like Skoltech, have become strangers to them since August. But it doesn't scare me too much, there are always ways.

“In the coming months, we will see how justified the expectations are”

- Previously, among the main problems of the Russian venture capital market, experts called the difficulty in finding strategic investors for startups so that investors at earlier stages could return their investments. Because of this, the latter were reluctant to provide money to startups. Has the situation deteriorated with the departure of foreign investors?

Igor Drozdov: Something has changed in a negative direction, and something in a positive one. A number of startup products turned out to be very interesting in the conditions when Western competitors left. New markets are opening up for them. If earlier their potential income was limited to some bar, conditionally 1,000 clients, now there may be hundreds of thousands of them. This, of course, completely changes the prospects of companies, including investment ones. A number of companies have the opportunity to become truly significant in the local market.

- There is an opinion that, due to the fact that the authorities themselves see the disappointing results of the import substitution program, its representatives have begun to use this term less and less. Do you agree?

Igor Drozdov: I can't rate it, I don't have the whole picture. If we take the segment in which I cook, in terms of existing developments, including small-scale production, then there are a lot of developments and great potential. In personal communication, and I travel a lot in the regions, I see the enthusiasm on the part of companies. In the coming months, it will be seen how justified the expectations. The consortiums that we do are also a way to bring together several solutions and create something big. I am not saying that everything can be done 100%, that there are no problems, that would be false. But you need to look at what the technological order will be like tomorrow, what technologies will replace the current ones, and aim at them, at those technologies where you have not yet fallen behind. There you can create the necessary groundwork to feel comfortable in ten years.

Alexander Kuleshov:If we proceed from specific examples, have we been able to replace anything with imports, then yes, the results are regrettable. Initially, it was a mistake, for example, to create a register of TORP (telecommunication equipment of Russian origin. -). To get into it, the manufacturer had to make 70% of the cost of the product in Russia, but when the moment of truth came, it turned out that even if you have 99% made in Russia, but not 100%, you still can’t produce. It was necessary to make the main criterion for recognizing the equipment domestic, whether it can be produced without asking for permission. So that it does not work out that when you were refused to supply one basic processor, then that's it, there is no final product either. But I am naming you only one error that lies on the surface, but in fact it was a collection of errors.

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— There are two approaches to how to solve the current problems facing the country. Either start developing, producing everything on your own, or try to import Western solutions that have become inaccessible by parallel import, smuggling - whatever you like. Which way is more realistic, promising?

Alexander Kuleshov: Both ways are impossible. We keep forgetting that we are no longer the USSR, which, together with the Warsaw Pact countries, made up a third of the world. The Soviet Union had its own aviation industry, and by the way, it was very good, but it died. It is impossible to smuggle Airbus or Boeing, even large parts of them. You can buy tires or brake pads on the sly, from third parties, develop your own technical support system. Iran does this. But we have a larger country and more people.

We are not able to produce everything now. In the Russian SSJ aircraft, most of the components are imported. As an example, in Soviet times there was the Ministry of the Aviation Industry, which oversaw everything for this industry, from ore and nails, roughly speaking, to the final product. This is not the UAC, which brought together enterprises designing aircraft. It was an industry in which materials, software, electronics were made.

— What technologies and startups, in your opinion, will be in the greatest demand in the near future?

Igor Drozdov: From what we are looking at, there are many projects in the field of electric power industry, development of industrial technologies, for example, for the oil and gas industry, engine building, aircraft building, technologies in the field of private aerospace.

Alexander Kuleshov:I will say a banal thing - but everything related to artificial intelligence, new materials that can withstand higher pressure than existing ones, need their own batteries. At Skoltech, we have high-quality small-scale production of batteries, we are now talking with the government about scaling it up. Among the promising areas is also photonics and everything connected with it. We have lost completely in microelectronics, but in photonics the gap is not very large yet, we are quite capable of eliminating it. But for this you need to invest money. The problem with almost all new startups is that they need very serious equipment to achieve results. And by the way, cutting off access to this equipment is the worst and saddest thing that can happen to us. But in the end, not everything is concentrated in unfriendly countries. In Taiwan in the 1970s, only watermelons were grown, and now it is the main center for the production of microchips in the world. We need long-term plans, and we need to work.

"When will everything be smooth?"

- How did the departure of Arkady Dvorkovich affect Skolkovo? Did you talk to him before he left? Are you in a relationship now?

Igor Drozdov: Since we are supervised by Igor Shuvalov, and the strategy is determined by the board of directors, there have been no strategic changes from this point of view. Of course, we communicated with him before leaving and, in principle, maintain human contact.

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How has your work changed since the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine, has it increased? How did you explain the situation to employees, partners, friends, family?

Igor Drozdov: I've been working at Skolkovo for a long time, and we've never been on the fast track. In 2020, we made a change to the strategy, began to work more closely with VEB, the new government, other tasks, and adaptation to the CORONAVIRUS. Now there is a new situation. My favorite rhetorical question: "When will everything be smooth?" But in a sense, there is more drive; difficulties, paradoxically, motivate. But this does not mean that you have to work 24/7, the schedule is reasonable.

We, in fact, have synchronized with the tasks that the government sets for itself. First of all, we discuss working issues with employees, how we should adjust the activities of the fund in order to be useful to start-ups in the current situation. I often talk with colleagues, my task is to inspire them, inspire optimism and positivity so that they remain emotionally stable, focused on work and results.

Alexander Kuleshov: I didn't have any depression or prostration. He wiped away the tears of others. It was continuous. Many friends have left. The initial impulse was very strong. Someone returned, someone is not very happy. You know, people jumped out with a few thousand dollars, but time passes, and it turns out that everything is not so simple, that there are no jobs, etc.

- Do you have friends abroad? Did you have to cut off a relationship with someone?

Igor Drozdov: There are friends abroad, classmates. There were no dramatic stories.

Alexander Kuleshov: I did not break off relations with anyone. A couple of days ago, our former professor, a Frenchman, sent an absolutely amazing letter - you can read it on Channel One in [Vladimir] Solovyov's program - he wrote: what bastards Americans are and how right you are in everything.