Skolkovo Foundation, which is helping build Russia’s high-tech research centre outside Moscow, has signed a partnership with American venture capital firm Bessemer Venture Partners.
The partnership will see Bessemer, which was effectively formed as a family office in 1911 out of Henry Phipps’s share of the proceeds from the sale of Carnegie Steel and named after a process for making steel, invest $20m in Skolkovo-resident companies over the next two years.
The deal is part of a visit by Skolkovo Foundation to California, US, which includes a visit to space agency NASA and several research centres, including those of computer group Cisco. On Wednesday, Skolkovo expanded its relationship with Cisco to support its research.
This followed Skolkovo gaining political support for Russia’s 47 biggest state-controlled companies, including Gazprom, Russian Railways, RusHydro, and Aeroflot, to transfer 1% of their innovation budgets, about R10bn ($340m) to Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (SkTech).
Set up by Skolkovo Foundation and US university Massachusetts Institute of Technology last year, SkTech will effectively become Russia’s biggest endowment fund, projected at R16.5bn ($560m) this year, with private partners of the Institute donating the remainder.