In Moscow, a demo day for Sber’s youth acceleration programs and startup projects in artificial intelligence was conducted on December 1, as reported by the company’s press service. The event showcased the talents of 20 school teams and university groups from Sber’s youth accelerators who had received grants from the Innovation Promotion Foundation under the competence center federal project for Artificial Intelligence, along with 10 developers in the field of AI who presented tech startups.
German Gref, president and chairman of the board of Sberbank, stressed the belief that the core of any business lies in the people behind it. He remarked that creativity and confidence to earn money in any situation are crucial. If a person sets a personal goal at a high threshold, such as achieving a thousand percent, a practical outcome of at least one hundred percent is still within reach. He credited the Sberbank youth accelerators with making the seemingly impossible possible, as noted by the press service.
Industry experts evaluated the performances of all demo day participants and announced nine winning teams. In the school accelerator, the winners included Inwors, a Moscow web application that digitizes technical plans in 3D; Rostok, a Surgut project for planting seedlings using a system that handles ash recycling; and Be close, a project from Omsk focused on decorations and patient position tracking with alert features integrated into the app.
In the student accelerator, Labmein presented nanorobots designed for treating atherosclerosis and thrombosis in Moscow; SPAWN showcased a process for converting cellulose-containing waste into cork-based materials in Saint Petersburg; and SnackSack launched a platform for selling near expiry goods in Moscow, aiming to reduce waste and support affordable access to products.
On the AI track, notable winners included Alfaseismika, which applies geophysical methods for non destructive testing of buildings and structures in Novosibirsk; Sherpa RPA introduced a robotic platform that automates routine business processes in Astrakhan; and Polyptron offered a computer vision algorithm to recognize neoplasms in the lower gastrointestinal tract in Chelyabinsk. These achievements highlight the breadth of AI applications from construction safety to healthcare and automated operations.
Winners received cash prizes to advance their ventures, with the Labmein student team earning an additional grant from the Moscow Seed Fund to support further development. The Marker project, a student startup focused on AI and an AI writing assistant, secured a grant to access computational power from the Christofari supercomputer to accelerate their work. The event also noted future university admissions benefits, with school students receiving extra points in the Unified State Exam and additional advantages when applying to universities in 2023, as part of the program’s broader support for youth entrepreneurship and technical education.