Founders of NtechLab, which developed a facial recognition system, left the company due to disagreements over work in Russia

The founders of NtechLab, Alexander Kabakov and Artem Kukharenko, which develops facial recognition technologies, have left the company due to disagreements with management and investors. The entrepreneurs themselves told Reuters about this.

According to them, the main disagreement was that they wanted NtechLab to stop all operations in Russia and move its employees out of the country. The company's management wanted to continue operating in Russia.

“The majority of shareholders supported the management, so we had no choice but to leave the company,” Kukharenko said.

According to the company's founders, they began discussions about ending all projects in Russia after the poisoning of politician Alexei Navalny in August 2020.

“It became clear that the country was heading towards disaster, although no one could have imagined that the country would start a war,” Kukharenko explained.

Both businessmen are not in Russia. Alexander Kabakov left the country in December 2021 (as Meduza has learned , Kabakov left Russia after Ilya Sachkov, the head of another technology company that collaborates with government agencies, was arrested in 2021 on charges of treason), and Artem Kukharenko in March 2022, shortly after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In an interview with Reuters, they said they had signed a petition against the war.

In July 2022, CNews, citing sources, wrote that Kabakov and Kukharenko had left the company's management. According to sources, this happened several months ago.

• NtechLab is a developer of facial recognition systems, one of the owners of the company is the state corporation Rostec. The technology developed by the company is used in the city video surveillance system in Moscow. In 2020, the system was launched in ten more cities in Russia. With its help, security forces detained suspected criminals and oppositionists.
• After February 24, 2022, Kabakov and Kukharenko were added to the "list of corrupt officials and warmongers" ("List 6000") maintained by the Anti-Corruption Foundation. After that, they passed on information about NtechLab to Alexei Navalny's associates. They were soon removed from the list. Leonid Volkov explained this decision by the fact that the founders of the company left it and released a statement condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In October 2022, they were returned to the list. The FBK stated that "Kukharenko and Kabakov's repentance was not public enough, and the information they provided was not comparable in significance to their contribution to building a police state."