Cisco to help create Silicon Valley in Russia with $1-billion investment

Cisco, the world's largest maker of networking equipment, yesterday pledged to invest $1-billion in Russia over the next decade in order to help the country establish a technology hub outside Moscow.

Cisco's $1 billion pledge came, when Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, on a whirlwind trip to the Silicon Valley on Wednesday, visited some of the top technology companies located here.

During a meeting with Medvedev at Cisco's headquarters in San Jose, Cisco chairman and CEO John Chambers pledged to invest $1 billion over a 10-year span to build a planned technology hub in Skolkovo outside Moscow, similar to Silicon Valley in the US.

Skolkovo, located 20kms outside of Moscow is being built to create a research centre that will focus on five main areas: energy, information technologies, communication, biomedical research and nuclear technologies.

One of the areas of focus for Cisco and the Skolkovo project will be for Cisco to play a key role in the design of Skolkovo, a framework that will be based on the business model behind the Cisco Globalisation Centre East in Bangalore, India.

Cisco, which has already invested in Russian venture capital firm Almaz Capital Partners, will extend the venture commitment to Russia's innovation economy by $100 million.