HSE Students Among Winners of Yandex High-Tech Startup Accelerator
Yandex has announced the results of its Yandex AI Startup Lab accelerator, whose final round featured 12 IT projects. Over the course of three months, their creators—students and young entrepreneurs—worked alongside the company’s experts to develop their products. Four startups in digital marketing, medicine, and robotics were named the best, with their teams receiving cash prizes and cloud resource grants. Among them was Gradius, a startup founded by students from HSE University.
Gradius is a project created by Kirill Saraev (third-year student on the Advertising and Public Relations programme at the Faculty of Creative Industries), Nikita Iltyakov (second-year student on the AI360 track of the Applied Mathematics and Information Science programme at the Faculty of Computer Science), and Gleb Bondarchuk, a student at Novosibirsk State Technical University.
The team developed a technology that integrates contextual advertising into neural network responses, offering AI services a new monetisation model. Their algorithms process data from millions of users in real time, instantly identifying user queries and selecting relevant advertisements. With this innovative programme, the advertising audience tripled from one million to three million users. Gradius received 3 million roubles, as well as a grant worth 1 million roubles for access to Yandex Cloud computing resources.
Lyudmila Bulavkina
According to Lyudmila Bulavkina, head of the workshop, during the first year of the minor the team worked on a different project—a music service—which they successfully sold over the summer. ‘The Gradius project was conceived in late September and was already launched by November,’ she said. ‘Their mentor in the Entrepreneurship Workshop, Natalia Mushkareva, calls the students "the Three Musketeers": all for one and one for all. They are incredibly fast, determined, and united—that is their superpower. They are not afraid to knock on any door and test bold hypotheses. The main thing our academic programme gives students is a systematic approach to business, the ability to focus on what truly matters, strong team cohesion, and constant mentor support. That is precisely what delivers results.’
Nikita Iltyakov
Nikita Iltyakov said the team has no intention of stopping there. ‘We grew tremendously as a company during the accelerator and were determined to win. When our team was announced, I could hardly believe it. We are now actively expanding our team, experimenting with new options, and negotiating with agencies and potential partners. I am convinced that advertising will soon undergo a complete transformation, and our team wants to be a part of it. We are motivated by the thought that we are creating the advertising of the future,’ he explained.
Kirill Saraev
Kirill Saraev previously worked at an advertising agency and was involved in developing a platform for video game competitions. ‘Later, I became passionate about creating my own project. I asked around for the brightest person at the Faculty of Computer Science, and Nikita was recommended to me. That is how our collaboration began. In just five months, we grew from zero to three million users. The main takeaway from the accelerator was not even the victory itself, but rather the opportunity to work with Yandex experts, who truly understood the value of our project,’ said Kirill Saraev.
Evgeny Sokolov
According to Evgeny Sokolov, Head of the Big Data and Information Retrieval School at the Faculty of Computer Science at HSE University, technological entrepreneurship is an important focus for the faculty’s students. ‘If students are well versed in both technology and the market, and can transform unconventional ideas into popular products, that is incredibly valuable,’ he said. ‘Such expertise usually requires many years of work in major companies, trying out various roles, and only then do opportunities for innovation become apparent. That is why it is especially gratifying that our students, at such a young age, have managed to create a product that is genuinely at the cutting edge of technology and has earned recognition from Yandex professionals.’
Roman Morozov
‘We are actively developing experimental projects within the company and are committed to engaging with external talent,’ said Roman Morozov, Chair of the Yandex AI Startup Lab jury and Head of Delivery and Experiments. ‘The accelerator enabled us to bring together students, young researchers, and entrepreneurs with strong ideas and promising projects. Over the course of three months, with the support of mentors, they made significant progress and substantially strengthened their technologies. We selected four outstanding startups, but we would like to continue working with many of the participants. I hope that next time we will be able to attract even more promising teams.’
Yandex AI Startup Lab was launched in November 2025 (more details in Russian). Approximately one thousand startups founded by students and young researchers from 146 universities applied to participate in the accelerator. The projects spanned a wide range of fields, including cybersecurity, medicine, logistics, education, and digital marketing. The selection process involved several stages: application review, interviews with Yandex experts, and an on-site intensive boot camp held in January 2026.
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