The Skolkovo Foundation and VEB Innovations signed a partnership agreement under which the company will carry out activities aimed at developing and commercializing the developments of the Skolkovo Innovation Centre. The total amount of project financing will amount to 3 billion rubles in 2019-2021.

The signed document is intended to bring the interaction between the parties to a qualitatively new level, to provide support to Skolkovo as a center of high-tech development and to contribute to the maximum realization of its potential. As part of the agreement, VEB Innovations will finance projects at the stage of business scaling in a number of areas, including energy efficiency and energy saving, nuclear and space technologies, development of medical equipment and medicines, strategic computer technologies and software, as well as biotechnologies for agriculture and industry.

Konstantin Parshin, Vice-President and Executive Director of the Information Technologies Cluster of the Skolkovo Foundation, said: "We see a great prospect of cooperation with one of the key development institutions, VEB Innovations. I am confident that we will be able to establish cooperation with the Skolkovo ecosystem, both with startups and other industrial partners, which will contribute to the formation of a funnel of quality innovation projects for VEB Innovations and accelerate the introduction of promising domestic technologies.

Oleg Teplov, General Director of VEB Innovations, said: "Together with the Skolkovo Foundation, we have successfully launched several joint initiatives, such as the East Bound contest, which allowed Russian promising companies to present their projects to potential investors from India, Japan and the Middle East. The partnership agreement provides for active support of the Innovation Center residents, first of all, in the form of financing the most interesting and promising technologies. Today, Skolkovo has a huge potential and a lot of promising developments, but not all of them reach the stage of marketable products. Therefore, we are ready to actively share with the developers those competences, which they lack for commercialization of ideas and further going abroad".

In addition to financing projects, the company will participate in scientific and technological conferences and other public events of the Skolkovo Foundation, as well as participate in the organization of competitions, practices, workshops, lectures and consultations on topics related to priority areas of work. In addition, it will provide residents of the Skolkovo Innovation Centre with mentoring support in the area of current technological trends. At the same time, VEB Innovations will be able to participate in pilot and pilot tests and commercialization of the center's most interesting projects. In turn, the Skolkovo Foundation will provide the partner with access to the research carried out within the framework of the Innovation Center.