Venture capital in Russia
Oct 8, 2025
For a short time, Russia had a venture capital market, which was certainly a good option for some extremely high-risk types of business.
That time has passed now, at least for the mass entrepreneur. Maybe venture capital will come back to Russia, but for now local entrepreneurs need to learn to build technology companies without it.
Because Russia lacks a large layer of infrastructure services that have already shown their effectiveness and return on investment in other countries, there seem to be good chances of finding financing at the early stages even in today’s Russian realities.
At later stages, the missing late-stage venture investors could well be replaced by the stock market. As it was, for example, not so long ago in the US in the 70s, 80s and 90s.
Microsoft and Amazon went public very early by the standards of today’s American companies. No need to look far: even the relatively modern Tesla went public at a fairly early stage of development. Microsoft at a market cap of ~$800M (~$2B in today’s dollars) at the time of its IPO, Amazon ~$450M (~$850M in today’s dollars), Tesla ~$1.6B (~$2B in today’s dollars).
The reason was precisely the relatively weak state of the venture industry.
And that allowed ordinary retail investors to make very good money. Which, by the way, almost never happens now in that same US. Look at the valuations Airbnb or Uber went public at and what growth in market cap they’ve been able to deliver over these years.
I’d like to believe Russia can repeat that success. Retail investors in Russia have money. What’s missing is an environment that doesn’t create as much uncertainty and distrust as we have now.
In Russia, the president has set a significant goal of increasing the stock market’s share of GDP, from the current ~25% to 66% by 2030. I hope the government and the relevant agencies will nevertheless create the preconditions for achieving it. Because the potential is really there. The country needs its own developed space industry, electronics, robotics and AI.
Originally posted in Russian on my telegram. This is a translation.