Grey Market for Chinese Proxies to Foreign AI Models Grows in Russia

A grey market has sprung up in Russia around Chinese proxies that give businesses access to foreign AI models, according to data from GPTunneL, an aggregator providing access to overseas AI chatbots, as reported by Vedomosti.

By late summer, the number of individual entrepreneurs offering such proxies had grown to 50, with turnover for these services reaching 100-150 million rubles. GPTunneL estimated the turnover of legal aggregators at 700 million rubles for August alone and at five to six billion rubles since the start of the year.

Ivan Kopylov, technical lead at business AI developer MWS AI, puts monthly turnover at one billion rubles excluding large business. GPTunneL forecasts that by year's end monthly turnover for legal services could rise to 1.4 billion rubles, and for entrepreneurs with Chinese proxies to 200-300 million rubles.

A source at a cloud provider told the publication that the grey market often offers access to modern models at ten percent of their real cost, earning money on client data - the intermediary stores queries and responses to train its own model. Roman Kutsev, founder of LLM Arena, confirmed the risk.

Kopylov adds that buyers under the grey scheme are often given cheap Chinese language models such as MiniMax or Qwen instead of the advertised advanced Claude model. Still, Kutsev notes, a shortage of powerful graphics processors in Russia makes using foreign models a necessity, even if access carries risk and costs several times more than with foreign providers.

Earlier reports said Russian companies spent $909 million (74.6 billion rubles) on foreign IT solutions in the second quarter of 2026, 30 percent more than in the first.