MOSCOW, Nov 24 (Reuters) - Artificial intelligence will

bestow vast influence on a par with nuclear weapons to those

countries who are able to lead the technology, giving them

superiority in the 21st Century, one of Russia's top AI

executive told Reuters.

Alexander Vedyakhin, First Deputy CEO of Sberbank, which has

evolved from a traditional lender into a technology conglomerate

focused on AI, said it was an achievement that Russia ranks

among seven countries with home-grown AI technologies.

"AI is like a nuclear project. A new 'nuclear club' is

emerging globally, where either you have your own national large

language model (LLM) or you don't," Vedyakhin said in an

interview at Russia's flagship annual AI Journey event.

He said Russia must have at least two or three original AI

models, not "retrained foreign models," for use in sensitive

areas such as online public services, healthcare and education.

"It is impossible to upload confidential information into a

foreign model. It is simply prohibited. Doing so would lead to

very unpleasant consequences," Vedyakhin said, adding that only

Russian models should handle state data.

President Vladimir Putin last week said home-grown AI models

were vital to preserving Russian sovereignty. Sberbank and

technology firm Yandex are leading Russia's effort to catch up

with U.S. and Chinese rivals.

Vedyakhin acknowledged that Russia would struggle to match

leaders in computing power, especially due to Western sanctions

limiting access to technology, and said the gap was likely to

grow.

He warned that current energy consumption levels make

returns on AI investment "either very distant or not visible at

all," cautioning against "overheated hype" around AI

infrastructure spending.

"We believe that excessive investments in AI infrastructure

may indeed fail to pay off, given the rapid pace of

technological development," he said, adding that Russia was

immune to an "AI bubble" because its investment was not

excessive.