Cisco to pump $1B into Russia’s startup city

Russian president Dmitry Medvedev‘s attempt to create a ‘Silicon Valley’ from scratch in his homeland gained the support of one of the Internet’s big guns this week.

After his tour of Silicon Valley, Medvedev managed to secure $1 billion in investment from networking giant Cisco Systems, which pledged to invest capital in Russian startups, and to eventually locate a second headquarters for its Emerging Technologies Group in Skolkovo, Russia’s planned startup community just outside Moscow.

Cisco will also help design the Skolkovo technology city, and will follow the business model set by the development of its high tech Globalisation Centre East campus in Bangalore, India.

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