German Gref, statesman and banker. Biography

German Oskarovich Gref is a Russian statesman and banking figure. President, Chairman of the Management Board of Sberbank since November 28, 2007. Prior to that, he was the Minister of Economic Development and Trade in several government structures, the vice-governor of St. Petersburg, and the head of the KUGA. Gref is one of the authors of the economic reforms of the 2000s.

Gref's path to the top ranks of government began in a small village: a legal adviser to the regional agricultural administration, then special units of the internal troops, a law faculty at Omsk State University, graduate school at Sobchak — and then only up.

German Gref: childhood in Kazakhstan

German Gref was born on February 8, 1964 in the village of Panfilovo, Pavlodar region, Kazakh SSR. His parents are Russian Germans who were exiled to Kazakhstan in 1941. Gref himself would later say: they are "exiled Leningraders." My school years were spent in a small town on the banks of the Irtysh River — several tens of thousands of inhabitants.

His father, Oscar Fedorovich, was an engineer. His fellow villagers respected him so much that they installed a memorial plaque on the administration building. Oskar Gref developed an energy supply system for the post-war settlement and for this he received the title of honorary resident of the district.

Mother is Emilia Filippovna, an economist. Herman was one and a half years old when his father died. The three children, the youngest of whom was Herman, were raised by their mother and grandmother.

German Gref: education and the beginning of the path

After school, German Gref worked as a legal adviser in the regional agricultural administration of the Irtysh region (1981-1982). Then in his life there were two years of service in special units of the internal troops of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs.

In 1990, Gref graduated from the Law Faculty of Omsk State University with a degree in law and stayed there to teach. At the university, he was a Komsomol member of the course, the head of the Komsomol opera group. Joined the CPSU.

Since 1991, he has been a legal adviser, and then chairman of the Property Management Committee, deputy head of the administration of the Petrodvorets district of St. Petersburg.

In 1993, he completed postgraduate studies at the Faculty of Law of St. Petersburg State University. Gref's supervisor was Anatoly Sobchak. Later, in 2011, Gref will defend his thesis at the RANEPA — "Development and prospects of structural institutional reforms in the Russian economy."

From October 1994 to July 1997, German Gref was Deputy Chairman and Director of the Real Estate Department of the St. Petersburg City Administration. In July-August 1997 — First Deputy Chairman of the KUGI, then acting head.

From August 1997 to August 1998, he was the Vice-Governor and Chairman of the St. Petersburg City Administration. As a representative of the city authorities, he is a member of the councils of the Seaport of St. Petersburg, St. Petersburg -5th Channel, and Lenenergo. Since January 1998, he has been a member of the Board of the Ministry of State Property of the Russian Federation.

German Gref: Government service

From August 12, 1998 to May 24, 2000, German Gref worked as the First Deputy Minister of State Property of the Russian Federation. From 1999 to 2011, he was Chairman of the Board of the Center for Strategic Research. It was the CSR that was then developing the election program of presidential candidate Vladimir Putin.

From May 18, 2000 to September 24, 2007, he worked as the Minister of Economic Development and Trade of the Russian Federation. Gref worked in the governments of Mikhail Kasyanov and Mikhail Fradkov. He was Deputy Chairman of the Government's commission for the implementation of production sharing agreements. Since 2005, he has been the head of the commission for the formation of a list of projects applying for funds from the Investment Fund of the Russian Federation.

2001-2003 — Chairman of the Board of Directors of Sheremetyevo International Airport. He was a member of the boards of directors of Gazprom, RAO UES, Rosneft, Aeroflot and Svyazinvest.

German Gref: at the head of Sberbank of Russia

On November 28, 2007, Gref became the head of Sberbank of Russia. And he immediately uttered a phrase that was later quoted for years: he compared the country's oldest bank to a clumsy elephant that needs to be taught to dance.

What has changed during this time? The bank has launched a "Credit Factory", an automated system that has reduced the time for reviewing loan applications from seven days to one or two. We have started transfers by phone number. Later, in 2017, the DocDoc company appeared in the Sber group - today it is Sberbank Health.

The Cybersecurity Center (Security Operation Center) was established in 2015 to protect against hacker attacks. By 2026, the effectiveness of the anti-fraud system, which blocks suspicious transfers, has reached 99.99%. In 2025, the bank prevented the theft of more than 360 billion rubles. The clients' money was saved.

In 2016, the bank created the Special Bank team, which adapts products and services for people with disabilities. According to the Bank of Russia, Sber is recognized as the most accessible bank in the country.

When the COVID-19 pandemic was announced, the bank allocated more than 3 billion rubles to fight the virus, including personal funds from employees and top managers. The money was used to support regional hospitals, purchase equipment and medicines.

In 2020, the bank changed its signboard. Now it officially operates under the brand "Sber" with a new logo: a blue-yellow-green unfinished circle with a green check mark inside and the word "Sber".

German Gref: Artificial intelligence and digitalization

Gref often talks about AI. Back in 2016, he predicted that within five years, about 80% of the bank's decisions would be made automatically using artificial intelligence.

In 2019, he merged Yandex, MTS, Mail.ru Group into an Alliance in the field of AI. At the same time, the annual AI Journey conference, the country's main industry platform, was launched. Gref moderated discussions with President Vladimir Putin and participated in the discussion of the National Strategy for the Development of AI until 2030.

In 2022-2023, Sber released its own generative products: the GigaChat language model and the Kandinsky neural network.

At AI Journey 2025, Gref announced that the flagship models — GigaChat Ultra Preview, GigaChat Lightning, acoustic GigaAM and Kandinsky 5.0 — are publicly available. According to Gref, this open source project has become the largest in the world. At the same time, Gref introduced the updated concept of GigaChat, which is no longer just a chatbot, but a personal AI assistant. He buys goods himself, analyzes reports, and schedules meetings. Connects the necessary services and agents — without human intervention. A marketplace of AI agents inside GigaChat has been launched for third-party developers. Gref then said, "We are moving from automation to autonomy."

At the same time, in June 2025, at the annual shareholders' meeting, he noted that AI at an early stage of development would not be able to completely replace humans. There will always be employees in the bank — it's just that the nature of their work will change.

March 2026 — new update. GigaChat Ultra has received long-term memory (the model remembers facts about the user between sessions), automatic search for relevant information on the Internet and a built-in code interpreter. The generation rate has doubled. Once again, the weights and code were made publicly available so that any organization could deploy the model in its closed loop.

German Gref: Education and science

In 2012, the Corporate University "Sbera" was opened — today it is one of the best corporate universities in the world. Not only bank employees study there, but also clients, partners, governors, government members, and teachers.

In 2018, at the initiative of Gref, the School 21 project was launched — the training of digital engineers. The first campus opened in Moscow. By April 2026, more than 20 campuses have already been opened across the country.

In 2022, the bank established the BEAC Science Prize for Russian scientists. There are three main nominations: "Physical World" (physics, chemistry, astronomy, Earth sciences, technical sciences), "Life Sciences" (biology, medicine, agricultural sciences) and "Digital Universe" (mathematics, computer science, computer science, artificial intelligence). There are three more AI in Science nominations for young scientists under the age of 35 working with AI. In 2026, the prize fund is 111 million rubles. The final decision is made by a committee co-chaired by German Gref and the Rector of Skoltech, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Alexander Kuleshov.