Every Seller Gets an AI Analyst: SberBusiness Helps Marketplace Merchants Boost Profits
Marketplace sellers using SberBusiness now have access to an AI-powered sales advisor built directly into the online banking platform. Instead of hiring dedicated analysts or paying for one-off consulting services, merchants can access business intelligence as part of their day-to-day banking workflow.
The AI analyst, powered by the Russian GigaChat model, is designed to help merchants run their businesses more effectively. It offers expertise across 110 business topics, ranging from sales and advertising to financial management, providing expert guidance through a conversational interface.
Personalized Analytics
The tool automatically aggregates data from a seller's marketplace account and, within seconds, generates analytical reports in the form of tables or concise text summaries. Users can ask questions in natural language and receive, for example, a strategy for building a more effective advertising campaign, optimizing product assortments based on customer preferences, or a comprehensive ABC/XYZ analysis that identifies which products generate the highest profits.
The service primarily targets small businesses, which often lose money because they lack the expertise needed to manage detailed unit economics. "Thousands of products, multiple marketplaces, some items sell better than others, one advertising campaign works while another does not – every seller needs high-quality analytics every single day," says Sergey Melamed, Director of Sberbank's Small and Micro Business Division.
Running the Numbers
Russia's e-commerce market grew by 28% in 2025, reaching RUB 11.5 trillion (approximately $146 billion), with more than 96% of total sales generated through domestic marketplaces. Such an intensely competitive environment demands fast, data-driven decision-making.
Sber has already announced that, in the near future, its AI assistant will move beyond simply answering users' questions and begin delivering proactive business intelligence. The system will continuously monitor business metrics in the background, automatically alerting sellers when profit margins decline, popular products risk going out of stock, or advertising budgets are being spent inefficiently. By deeply integrating marketplace analytics with banking operations, the AI will also be able to calculate a company's actual net profit by incorporating loan obligations and tax payments, rather than relying solely on marketplace operating metrics.
Ecosystems for Marketplace Sellers
One of the first major Russian marketplace analytics platforms was MPStats, launched in 2020. The service helps large merchants analyze sales performance and competitive dynamics across Wildberries, Ozon and Yandex Market. Included both in the Russian Ministry of Digital Development's Register of Domestic Software and Skolkovo's resident registry, the platform now accounts for roughly one-third of the Russian marketplace analytics market.
Marketplace operators are also developing AI tools for their merchants. In 2024, Ozon introduced an AI agent capable of generating apparel images using virtual models. In 2025, Wildberries significantly expanded its APIs and reporting capabilities, and in May 2026 launched an AI assistant within the WB Partners chat platform that analyzes customer demand, inventory levels and search trends. Sber's AI analyst, however, extends beyond any individual marketplace by becoming part of a broader banking ecosystem designed to support small and medium-sized businesses.
The Era of Enterprise AI Assistants
Russia is now witnessing the emergence of a new class of enterprise software: specialized AI services capable of working directly with real business metrics. Marketplaces rely on extensive datasets describing customer behavior, independent analytics providers combine internal and external cross-platform information, while banks can synthesize both commercial and financial indicators. Over the medium term, AI agents are expected to take on demand forecasting and management decision support. Even today, however, generative AI models are evolving into practical operational tools for small and medium-sized businesses, delivering measurable economic value.
