Yandex denied claims that its artificial intelligence is entirely built on Chinese models. The company stated that it continues to create its own fundamental developments and maintains a full cycle – from training to implementation.

The reason for this was the speech of Sber's head, German Gref, in the Federation Council. He called Sber the only company with truly domestic AI and stated that Yandex retrains Chinese Qwen, while his company created its own model from scratch.

Yandex disagreed with this assessment but admitted to using the best open-source solutions. The company explained this by its desire to quickly implement new technologies and improve product quality.

At the same time, Yandex previously reported that YandexGPT 5 Pro uses Qwen 2.5 weights, and Alice AI uses Qwen 3. This means that Chinese developments are indeed involved, but the company insists that it is not limited to them and continues to develop its own models.