Sberbank's Gref claims Yandex merely fine-tunes Alibaba's Qwen; Yandex denies it
Yandex
Sberbank chairman German Gref told Russia's Federation Council on July 17, 2026 that Yandex no longer develops its own foundation models and instead fine-tunes Alibaba's Qwen, claiming Sber is the only fully domestic Russian AI developer left. Yandex publicly denied the claim, saying it retains a full in-house development cycle for YandexGPT and does not depend on external models.
Why it matters
Highlights a public rift between Russia's two largest AI labs over claims of technological sovereignty, relevant to how independently developed vs. China-derived Russian LLMs actually are.
Importance: 2/5
Notable public dispute between major Russian AI labs