GigaChat: How to Get Your Business into Sber's AI Answers in Russia

Here is a hypothetical but very realistic situation. A foreign manufacturer has launched a Russian-language website, gets indexed by Yandex and is already working on Alice AI answers. Then its Russian distributor reports that a buyer chose a competitor because "GigaChat recommended them". GigaChat is Sber's AI assistant. Russian users trust it more and more, it is built into services they already use, and in B2B it is often picked as a domestic AI solution. If GigaChat does not know your company, or knows it wrongly, you lose deals in a channel you were not even watching.

If you are planning to grow in Russia, this guide explains what GigaChat is, where your future customers run into it, where it gets its information, why it matters for both consumer and B2B sales, and what a foreign company needs to do to show up in its answers.

What GigaChat is and what its answer looks like

First, the basics. In classic search, a person gets a list of websites and compares them. In a chat with an AI assistant, they get an AI answer: a ready conclusion about which companies to consider and how they differ, sometimes with source links.

Sber (formerly Sberbank) is a major Russian bank that has grown into an ecosystem of consumer and business services. GigaChat is its AI assistant. A user types a question in plain Russian, for example "which video surveillance system should I choose for a small warehouse", and a few seconds later gets a detailed answer: selection criteria, solution options and sometimes manufacturer and company names. They can refine the question, ask for a comparison table or have the answer shortened. GigaChat also writes texts, analyzes documents and creates images, so people come to it with all kinds of tasks and ask for purchase advice along the way.

Where Sber embeds GigaChat

GigaChat's strength is that it lives where people already have habits. Sber's product lineup changes quickly, so here is the general picture:

• The GigaChat website — a browser-based chat, similar to other AI assistants.
• Mobile apps — GigaChat on a smartphone, including voice input.
• The Sber ecosystem — GigaChat capabilities are gradually built into Sber services and devices, including its Salute virtual assistants.
• Messenger bots — the assistant can be used without installing a separate app.
• Business solutions — an API and corporate products that companies use to build their own AI assistants for employees and customers.

Who uses GigaChat and why it matters for foreign companies

GigaChat is first and foremost a Russian product for a Russian-speaking audience, and it is easy to access through the familiar Sber ecosystem. For international markets it is not a key channel — there, Google, ChatGPT and Perplexity matter more. But for a company that wants to sell in Russia, GigaChat belongs on the same list as Yandex Alice AI.

Consumer sales in Russia

Consumers ask GigaChat the same things they used to ask a search engine or friends: which appliance to buy, which clinic to choose, which brand of skincare is worth trying, where to get equipment serviced. A person who trusts Sber with their money tends to trust its AI assistant too. If GigaChat names three brands in your category, the customer picks from those three.

B2B sales in Russia

In B2B, GigaChat matters twice over. Many Russian companies prefer domestic AI solutions for internal work, whether because of data storage requirements, industry rules or their own security policies. On top of GigaChat they build internal assistants: a procurement specialist asks for a list of suppliers, a lawyer checks a counterparty, a marketer drafts a market overview. If the model knows nothing about your company, you are not even on the long list.

Why your Google and ChatGPT visibility does not carry over

• A different model with different sources. GigaChat is trained with a strong focus on Russian-language text. What English-language media say about you carries less weight than what Russian sources say.
• Russian-language questions. Buyers ask in Russian, and the assistant looks for facts that match a Russian-language question. A company with no clear Russian-language presence is hard to recommend.

What being missing from GigaChat costs

• The recommendation goes to a competitor. The AI names a few companies, and the user rarely looks further. The decision is made before the buyer ever opens a search engine.
• Wrong facts. An old distributor, a discontinued product line, a former company name — if such details made it into the model's knowledge, they can resurface in answers until the model is updated.
• Invisible in corporate systems. A customer's internal AI assistant shows no ads and gives you no way to buy your way into the answer. The winner is the company the model knows.
• The loss does not show up in analytics. A buyer who never learned about you from the AI leaves no trace. Russian demand simply looks weaker than it is.

Where GigaChat gets its information

Sber does not publish a detailed description for website owners of how GigaChat selects sources, so what follows applies to AI assistants of this type in general.

Model knowledge

The core of an answer is what the model learned during training on a large body of text with a significant share of Russian. The model forms a stable picture of a company: what different sources say about it and which products, industries and regions it is associated with. That knowledge is updated with new model versions.

Fresh information from the web

In some modes and products GigaChat can use up-to-date information from the internet, and then source links appear in the answer. The search technology and crawlers behind this are not described in detail publicly, and as far as we know there is no public webmaster console similar to Yandex Webmaster. So the strategy is the same as for other AI assistants with closed mechanics: make your website a good source for any search engine.

Corporate knowledge bases

When a company builds an assistant on GigaChat, it often connects its own documents: policies, price lists, supplier proposals, presentations. That means your commercial proposal may end up in a buyer's knowledge base, and the assistant will summarize it for employees. A document the machine can easily read works for you; a scanned image without a text layer does not.

What a foreign company needs to do to show up in GigaChat answers

1. A solid SEO foundation for Russia

Your Russian-language pages should be indexed by Yandex and Google, load fast and be free of technical errors. Check robots.txt and your hosting, CDN and firewall settings: rules that block unfamiliar bots or entire regions can cut off many crawlers at once. Close only service sections. Without this base GEO does not work — AI assistants rely on the same websites as search. The Yandex side is covered in detail in our guide to getting into Yandex Alice AI answers.

2. The same company facts everywhere, in Russian

Company name (with one consistent Cyrillic spelling), legal entity or local partner, addresses, phone numbers, products, services and terms should match on your website, in Yandex Maps and Yandex Business, in Russian-language directories and industry catalogs, on distributor websites and on social media. Add schema markup so machines understand exactly what your company is. We explain how in our article on schema markup, FAQs and your company as an entity.

3. Russian-language content built around real prompts

Do prompt research — collect the questions Russian customers ask AI assistants — and answer them directly on the site. Use a real Russian-language version written by native speakers, not machine translation. For consumer brands that means prices or price ranges, delivery, warranty and where to buy in Russia. For B2B it means specifications, project requirements, what the cost depends on, comparisons of approaches and how the work is organized.

Hypothetical example. An Asian manufacturer of steel structures replaces a generic Russian "About us" page with sections such as "What a 1,000 m² warehouse frame costs and what drives the price", "Production and installation timelines, stage by stage" and "Documents we provide for a tender in Russia". Those are exactly the questions a procurement specialist asks an internal AI assistant.

4. Russian-language brand mentions and publications

For model knowledge, this is the main lever. You need mentions in Russian-language industry and business media, trade portals, rankings, directories and review platforms, plus expert articles by your specialists in external publications. The more independent Russian sources describe your company the same way, the better the chance the model will know it in future versions too. More on this in our article on brand mentions for AI search.

5. Documents a machine can read

For B2B, review your Russian-language proposals, price lists, spec sheets and presentations. They should contain real text rather than images, clear headings, and the company name, contacts and key facts on the first page. Publish the same information on the website in text form.

6. Keep everything current, every month

AI evaluates the whole website. An outdated price list, a broken form or a mismatch between the site and the map listing lowers trust. The site needs ongoing care, not a once-a-year refresh.

How to check results

• Regular checks on tracked prompts. A native speaker asks GigaChat the same Russian-language questions in a new chat: "recommend a supplier", "which to choose", "reviews of…". We record whether the company is mentioned, in what context and in what order.
• Fact check. Does the AI name your products, partners and terms correctly, and does it confuse you with a similarly named company?
• Sources. If the answer has links, whose websites are they — yours, competitors' or aggregators'?
• Comparison with other AI assistants. The same questions go to Alice AI and DeepSeek. Differences show where the weak spot is: the website or external sources.
• Analytics and sales. Track referrals from AI assistant domains in Yandex Metrica and ask new Russian customers how they heard about you.

AI answers vary with wording and change over time, so look at the trend over several months, and run a full re-check after a new model version is released.

GigaChat vs Alice AI vs ChatGPT

The result: Sber's AI assistant knows your company

When your Russian-language website is technically sound, your company facts match everywhere, your pages answer real customer questions and independent Russian sources write about you, GigaChat has everything it needs to know your company and describe it correctly. For consumer brands, that is a chance to be recommended where people already trust Sber. For B2B, it means getting in front of the corporate assistants that Russian buyers increasingly use to find suppliers.

No one can honestly guarantee a place in a GigaChat answer: the AI decides whom to name. But the way answers are formed is predictable enough, and companies that start earlier are the first to appear in the knowledge of new model versions.

How AI Search Optimization works with GigaChat

AI Search Optimization has been doing SEO since 2002. We have 100+ clients in Russia and around the world, we are Google and Yandex certified, and your website and AI visibility are handled end to end by one team. For us, GEO is built on top of good old SEO: Russian AI assistants rely on the same websites and third-party sources we have worked with for more than twenty years. We work with every AI assistant, including GigaChat and Yandex Alice AI, and help international companies, including companies from New York City, become visible to Russian customers.

What the work includes:

• AI visibility audit — what GigaChat and other AI assistants say about you and your competitors, and how accessible and clear your site is to machines;
• prompt research — the Russian-language questions your customers ask AI assistants;
• technical fixes on the website — AI crawler access, llms.txt, schema markup, speed and errors;
• new content built for AI answers for consumer and B2B customers;
• brand mentions on third-party sites and articles in external sources that build the authority of your company and its experts;
• ongoing AI visibility tracking across all your tracked prompts.

AI evaluates the whole website, so we take care of the entire site — from technical fixes to GEO. We guarantee delivery of GEO tasks, error fixes and fast adaptation of your website to changing AI search requirements.

Pricing is $290 per month, including the first 10 hours of work. Every additional hour is $45. We bill time and materials: only the work completed and delivered that month. No discounts or free months — an honest price from day one.

Book a call — we will ask GigaChat the questions your Russian customers ask, show you who it recommends in your category and build a plan to make sure the AI knows your company.