Russian banking and financial services company Sberbank unveiled on Thursday its second supercomputer. Known as the Christofari Neo, this supercomputer is expected to assist the company in meeting rising demand in AI services that are exceeding projections. The supercomputer is named after Nikolai Christofari, the bank’s first-ever customer from when it opened 180 years ago.
The new supercomputer was introduced as part of the company’s expanded range of digital services such as cloud computing and virtual assistant software. Artificial intelligence upgrades were also introduced on Thursday.
Currently the largest lender in Russia, Sberbank is moving towards providing more non-banking services such as virtual assistant software and cloud computing. The company even went so far as to remove the word “bank” from its logo last year, thereby signaling this strategic shift.
As traditional banks face sustained diminishing profit margins, a range of Sberbank’s competitors is also looking to diversify their product and service offerings. Both Yandex and Tinkoff have signaled their intent to expand their service ecosystem.
Sberbank Chief Technology Officer David Rafalovsky revealed that Sberbank has sufficient resources in order to heavily invest in expanding its technological capabilities: “We are not constrained in terms of ability to invest, in terms of capital,” Rafalovsky said in an interview. “We are investing more now (than a year ago). Our investments in core IT infrastructure and products overall went up.”
