The decline in investment in the Russian IT industry is linked not only to the tax burden but also to the high cost of capital, shifting business priorities, and the end of the investment boom of previous years. Olga Soldatkina, Researcher at the Gaidar Institute’s International Best Practices Analysis Department, spoke about this to Nezavisimaya Gazeta.
According to the expert, software development is characterized by a direct correlation between companies’ profits and their investments in developing their own products. Therefore, a reduction in investment forces companies to focus first and foremost on the reasons for the decline in profits.
One of the key factors remains the high cost of borrowing: the average key interest rate in 2025 stood at 19.1%. This being said, companies faced a labor shortage and began allocating more funds to recruit and retain employees, including by cutting other expenses. Another reason is the natural normalization following the investment boom of 2021 and the continued high pace of investment in 2022 amid a sharp rise in demand for domestic software.
However, according to Olga Soldatkina, data on software development does not allow for conclusions about the state of investment across the entire IT industry. A slowdown in investment may affect video games, microelectronics, cloud services, and data centers, though it manifests itself in different ways. For example, in the data center segment, this is primarily reflected in a slowdown in the deployment of new capacity: in 2025, 5,300 rack spaces were commissioned—half as many as the previous year.
Despite investment pressures, the Russian IT market still has room for growth. Import substitution is far from complete: in 2025, Russian software accounted for an average of about 40% of the solutions in use, and only 2% of Russian companies had fully transitioned to domestic software. An additional driver is Russian developers’ entry into the markets of friendly countries. Exports of IT services reached ₽172 bn in 2025, increasing by 20% over the year.
“The investment slowdown does not mean that the Russian IT market’s potential has been exhausted. The market has not yet reached saturation with domestic solutions, and IT service exports continue to grow. Cybersecurity deserves special mention: against the backdrop of increasing international threats, demand for off-the-shelf solutions is rising, and the Russian cybersecurity market grew by 16.1% in 2025. “Therefore, it is now important to distinguish between the temporary decline in investment activity and the industry’s long-term prospects,” emphasized Olga Soldatkina.