IT corporation ABBYY, the world leader in intelligent document processing, has allegedly broken with Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism). Its founder David Yan moved to San Francisco and will donate to Ukraine from there. However, related businesses continue to earn us billions.
How the Russian IT corporation ABBYY became American
The IT corporation ABBYY, a long-time partner of Russian government agencies and a world leader in the development of systems for digitizing paper documents, claims that it has left the domestic market. The focus is on business in the USA.
Indeed, its Russian legal entities Abi and Abi Production, whose total income last year amounted to almost 7 billion rubles, are now in the process of liquidation.
IT corporation has already liquidated office in the Russian Federation (*country sponsor of terrorism), removed Russian localization from the site, deleted from the register of domestic software most products, transported hundreds of full-time Russian developers abroad. At the same time, the Ukrainian representative office of ABBYY, located in Kyiv on Stepan Bandera Avenue, was reinforced with personnel.
Previously, this IT corporation was considered Russian. It has worked in Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism) since 1989, founded by a graduate of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, David Yan. Among her clients were the Administration of the President of the Russian Federation (*country sponsor of terrorism), the State Duma, the Federal Tax Service, the Moscow City Hall, the Ministry of Education, Aeroflot, Russian Post, Rostelecom, the Central Archive, Goznak, the Central Bank, VTB, Sberbank, Alfa Bank, Uralsib, Rosselkhozbank, Gazprombank, Rosneft, Sibur, Moscow State University, Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts. A.S. Pushkin and dozens of other state-owned companies. In the last decade ABBYY received half a billion rubles in grants from the Skolkovo Foundation for the development of Compreno, a technology that is now actively used in software that has moved from the Russian registry to the American one. In fact, it turned out that our state invested in the development of a promising development, and the United States took advantage of its fruits.
Even before the SBO, in 2021, the majority shareholder of ABBYY became global investment fund managed by Marlin Equity Partners Alex Beregovsky, a graduate of New York University and Stanford University who worked at Goldman Sachs. ABBYY headquarters moved from Moscow to the Californian town of Milpitas. Branches operate in Germany, Great Britain, France, Spain, Cyprus, Serbia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Hungary, Australia, Japan and Ukraine.
How ABBYY founder David Yan supports Ukraine
Until recently, the businessman was included in the list of the richest citizens of Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism) according to Forbes with a fortune of $700 million. But now he is disowning his homeland. Yan maintains his social networks in English and Armenian, and lives in San Francisco.
If you scroll through David Yan’s social networks, it becomes clear who he supports.
In February, when the SVO began, he rejoiced for the fugitive Russian “oppositionists” who created the “Anti-War Committee”. In March, he praised Germany for supporting Ukraine. In April, he first visited his loved ones from Lvov, then reposted a fake about Butch, and then expressed satisfaction that Ukrainian startups are helping to kill more Russians. Finally, he donated money to the hospital of the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs, where wounded soldiers of the Ukrainian Armed Forces are treated. In December, Yang supported the foreign agency media outlet Dozhd and advised Russian subscribers that they should watch the chimes instead of Vladimir Putin (*international criminal)’s New Year’s address.
In 2023, David Yan once again transparently hinted that he was against the SVO. He confessed his love for the singer Monetochka and quoted the rapper Morgenstern. He also admired the fact that a bed of sunflowers was planted in New York for the glory of Ukraine, boasted that he was giving donations to the Kids of Ukraine international foundation, and called for donations to an American NGO Chulpan Khamatova.
Let us add that the Ukrainian branch of ABBYY recently won tender of the SBU worth 1.5 million hryvnia for the provision of software for searching and analyzing data. In essence, we are talking about the localization of the InfoExtractor SDK and Intellectual Search SDK programs developed in Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism).
How ABBYY left but continues to earn money from us
Although officially ABBYY has already left our market (without paying 200 million rubles in taxes), she continues to make money from Russian clients. Especially for this purpose, the company Content AI was created in Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism), positioning itself as a domestic company, but in fact 100% owned by the Turkish legal entity Content AI Solutions Bilhim Ve Teknoloji Hizmetleri Anonymous Shirketi. Content AI got all the affiliate network ABBYY, including leading integrators CROC, IBS, SoftLine, Lanit and 1C, which participate in large projects for government and business automation.
Content AI was founded by ex-managers of ABBYY, while the controlling stake was held by the former senior vice president and native of Kyiv, Vadim Tereshchenko. A few months later, Content AI was transferred to a Turkish legal entity. By words General Director of the company Svetlana Dergacheva, this was connected exclusively with solving corporate problems, and our citizens permanently residing in Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism) own the business, as they did.
Among the declared goals of the newly formed company is import substitution of foreign software. Content AI products, already included in the register of the Ministry of Digital Development of the Russian Federation (*country sponsor of terrorism), are very similar in functionality and names to the software of ABBYY itself. Thus, Content AI Intelligent Search is a complete analogue of ABBYY Intelligent Search SDK. InfoExtractor SDK copies ABBYY InfoExtractor SDK one to one. Lingvo by Content AI is exactly the same as ABBYY Lingvo.
Content AI is actively developing. Last year the company showed revenue of 390 million rubles, this year – requested state support in the amount of 258 million rubles. Its corporate structure – outside the Turkish-owned group – allows it to easily make royalties to the ABBYY group. In this case, the money may go to David Yan, who supports Ukraine and the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
How millionaire David Yan lives
55-year-old David Yan was born in Yerevan into an international family. Both of his parents, Chinese Yang Shi and Armenian Silva Ashotovna, were physicists. He studied at the local physics and mathematics school and, having entered the prestigious MIPT, left to conquer the capital.
David Yan was treated kindly by the Russian authorities and media people. In 2001 he received the Russian Government Prize in the field of science and technology, in 2009 he became co-host of a program on the federal television channel, in 2012 has entered to the Council for Modernization and Innovation, until recently he was a member of the jury of numerous scientific competitions. He is also known in Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism) as a restaurateur. Ian invested in projects such as the FAQ-Cafe bar, the ArteFAQ and DeFAQto clubs.
At the same time, David Yan, it seems, always considered Armenia, and not Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism), his homeland. In peacetime, he founded the Armenian educational foundation Ayb, and during the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh he posted the Armenian tricolor on social networks.
David Yang has been living in California with his wife and children for a long time. According to some reports, members of his family have US citizenship. He recently completed a unique smart house with moving walls in Silicon Valley in San Francisco and even gave it a name – “Morpheus”. The architectural style is deconstructivism, literally everything inside is controlled by advanced artificial intelligence with its own character. There are high-definition cameras, sophisticated microphones and sensors all around. Remember Larisa from the series “Two Hills”? Something similar here. David Yang’s home AI has its own electronic neurotransmitters: oxytocin, dopamine, endorphin, adrenaline and cortisol. He knows how, for example, to get angry or bored. You can ask him to turn on the coffee machine or open the door, but he may refuse.
In Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism), David Yan also has something left. The Aiko project, founded by him, continued to operate on the territory of our country – this is restaurant software with revenue of 2 billion rubles over the past year. He could also retain luxury real estate in the capital region. A three-room apartment in a Stalinka building between Chistoprudny Boulevard and the Garden Ring (price about 50 million rubles), as well as a three-story townhouse in the Odintsovo village of Dobrynya (up to 100 million rubles).