Russia is shaping a fundamentally new approach to stimulating the development of domestic large language models. This is not about bans and restrictions, but about creating a powerful financial cushion for developers. Judging by the documents that landed on the desks at the Ministry of Digital Development in late July, the contours of this support are already clearly outlined.
The Mechanics of Incentives: What Is Proposed
The key tool should be an annual regional investment tax deduction on corporate income tax. The amount of the deduction will equal the costs of creating an AI model, but with an important nuance—the threshold is capped at 20 billion rubles per organization until 2030. At the same time, the company is required to invest five times more than the amount of the incentive itself into the project—a strict condition that filters out unscrupulous players.
The mechanism is also expected to extend to the purchase of equipment. Logically, Moscow will become the main testing ground for this measure, as it accounts for about 90% of all such costs in the country. A separate provision concerns the accounting of expenses for creating national and sovereign models—these are proposed to be accounted for at triple the amount. According to the authors' estimates, this will compensate up to 50% of invested funds through savings on corporate income tax.
For companies engaged in fine-tuning and integrating AI, their own relaxations are provided. Expenses for fine-tuning are proposed to be capitalized and included in the cost of the new model, while costs for refining AI-enabled software and subsequent modifications of products from the Ministry of Digital Development registry are to be accounted for at double the amount. In total, this will allow developers to recover from 5% to 25% of investments.
Insurance Premiums and the Authorities' Position
Developers and distributors of AI models may be granted a reduced insurance premium rate of 7.6%. For legal entities within the same group as the creator of a sovereign or national model, involved in its production and distribution, a zero rate is being considered. The list of such companies would need to be approved by the government, and this measure will not apply to banks.
It is telling that the government completely rules out a scenario of banning AI technologies. Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Grigorenko, speaking at a VEF session, emphasized that the issue of technological sovereignty is "far more multifaceted," and starting to address it with bans would be wrong. He noted that Russia has chosen a balanced path between the closed American and open Chinese development models. In his view, this is the most well-considered approach.
My comment. This step is a clear signal to the market: the state is ready to pay for independence in the AI sphere. However, the focus on major players and strict co-financing requirements may leave medium-sized businesses behind. The key question is not the size of the incentives, but the speed of their implementation: while documents undergo approval, the race for computing power continues, and every quarter of delay widens the technological gap.