Ukrainian drones hit Russia’s biggest data centre on Wednesday, part of a series of attacks appearing to target Moscow’s ambitions to develop Russian artificial intelligence capabilities on a par with those from the US and China.
The strike on the Balakovo data centre, owned by Sberbank, the country’s largest bank and technology company, followed three attacks in the past week on data centres owned by Russian technology group Yandex.
“We confirm that the data processing centre was attacked. At the same time, all of Sberbank’s systems and services are operating normally and without disruption,” Sberbank First Deputy CEO Alexander Vedyakhin told reporters.
Russia’s state RIA Novosti news agency reported in 2024 that the Sberbank centre hit on Wednesday would host Russia’s biggest supercomputer, which is scheduled to go into operation in 2027.
The Yandex data centres, hit earlier, hosted all three of that company’s operating supercomputers.
Neither Yandex nor Sberbank has said whether supercomputers, used to train the AI models, were damaged in the Ukrainian attacks.
Along with Yandex, its main domestic rival, Sberbank is Russia’s leading developer of artificial intelligence. The domestic market is shared between Sberbank’s GigaChat model and YandexGPT.
