RAS Academician Mikhail Predtechensky managed to invent something the rest of the world hadn't – the industrial production of single-wall carbon nanotubes. His products were purchased by 97% of the largest consumers, including Tesla. However, the Russian government decided that since it partially financed the academician's work through Rusnano, both the invention and all the resulting factories should belong to him, and it is taking everything away from Predtechensky. A source for the Cheka-OGPU and Rucriminal.info, who worked for many years within Rusnano, discusses the situation.
“The story of OCSiAl isn’t just another corporate conflict. It’s a diagnosis. Behind the dry lines of court decisions, asset seizures, and the appointment of a “new leader,” lies a clash of two management models. One is global, capitalistic, and efficient. The other is inventory-driven, bureaucratic, and triumphant. The outcome of this clash is predetermined: the unique technology will be buried, the creators will flee, and those who initiated the “restoration of order” will receive bonuses for successfully conducting the inventory.
1. How Chubais Built a Global Company
In 2009, a group of Novosibirsk scientists led by Academician Mikhail Predtechensky achieved what is called a technological breakthrough in Silicon Valley. They learned to produce single-wall carbon nanotubes on an industrial scale—something no one in the world had ever accomplished before. Next, they needed to do what in Silicon Valley is called commercialization: find investors, build a structure, protect intellectual property worldwide, and enter the market. markets.
This task was tackled by a team that is now routinely vilified. Anatoly Chubais, then the head of Rusnano, and his deputy, Yuri Udaltsov, understood that high-tech businesses cannot be built in a jurisdiction where patents are not valid outside the Customs Union. Together with entrepreneurs Yuri Koropachinsky, Oleg Kirillov, and Yuri Zelvensky, they built a classic structure for a global tech startup: a parent company in Luxembourg, patents in international jurisdictions, production in Russia, and sales worldwide.
And it worked. By 2019, OCSiAl controlled 97% of the global single-wall carbon nanotube market. It was valued at a billion dollars. Rusnano (a state development institute!) reported this as a success. Chubais called the company "the first Russian unicorn." Scientists from the Institute of Thermophysics of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences received a State Prize. For this What? For a development that prosecutors today call "misappropriated."
It was a working model. Not ideal, but the only possible one for a country that wants to be not just a raw materials base but also a technological player. A model in which the state (through Rusnano) acts as a patient investor, the scientist receives a stake in the business, and management brings the product to global markets. This is how Silicon Valley operates, and this is how Israeli, Chinese, and Korean technology champions operate.
2. The Arrival of the Oprichniks: A Paradigm Shift
In 2020, Chubais left. He was replaced by Sergei Kulikov. A man whose main management experience before Rusnano was limited to crisis management at companies that were beyond saving. A man under whose leadership the state corporation sank into debt, and its team of professionals dispersed.
But that's not the main thing. The main thing is a change in ideology. Instead of "let's build a global company," came "let's return assets to Russian ownership." Jurisdiction." Instead of "market capitalization," they said, "control at any cost." Instead of working with global partners, they filed lawsuits and petitioned the prosecutor's office.
The new team didn't know how to manage a high-tech export business. They knew how to conduct inspections, write reports, and report to the authorities. And now, when the court transferred OCSiAl's assets to the state, these people came to the production site. To "conduct a primary inventory."
3. Inventory as the highest form of management
The official statement states: "Representatives of the state corporation are working at the production sites, conducting a primary inventory." Inventory is, of course, important. But in the world of high technology, inventory is not management. It's a suicide note.
Because managing nanotube production means understanding catalytic synthesis, colloidal chemistry, complex raw material supply chains, and the specifics of working with clients from LG to Tesla. It means knowing how to set up a reactor when The pressure has dropped, how to replace an imported controller when it's impossible to buy, how to convince a Korean engineer that the product is stable, even if the patents are now owned by the state, which is suing the entire world.
The new team doesn't know how to do any of this. And they won't be able to learn it, because their competencies are in a different field. They know how to appoint a "new manager" who will "launch production taking into account scientific and technological specifics." This sounds like a mockery. "Accounting for scientific and technological specifics" "Logical specifics" translates from bureaucratic jargon as "we don't understand what's going on there, but we'll appoint someone responsible to write the reports."
4. Patents Remaining in Luxembourg
But even if the inventory managers miraculously establish nanotube production in Novosibirsk, what will happen to the global markets? Key patents are registered to Luxembourg and Hong Kong entities. They are still controlled by former OCSiAl managers, including Yuri Udaltsov, who is now in Serbia. It's there, in Belgrade, that a new plant with a capacity of 60 tons per year has opened, and its capacity is planned to double.
A Russian court can seize shares in a Novosibirsk LLC, but it cannot annul a patent in Luxembourg. And without these patents, Novosibirsk products cannot be legally sold in China, India, or Europe. Even within Russia, the question may arise: is the manufacturer violating intellectual property rights belonging to foreign entities?
But that's a question for tomorrow. Today's task is inventory. And it will be carried out brilliantly.
5. Who will answer for this mess?
And here's the main question, unasked by either the prosecutor's office or Rusnano: what will happen when the project is abandoned? When will the unique technology created by Novosibirsk scientists be transformed into a mothballed plant with departmental security and a report on "preserving the scientific and technological groundwork"?
Answer: no one will be held accountable. Because responsibility in this system is brilliantly distributed.
The following will be to blame:
· Academician Predtechensky, who "appropriated the development" (and is already leaving the country or is planning to);
· The old management (Koropachinsky, Udaltsov), who "moved assets abroad" (and are already in exile);
Sanctions, the market, Chubais's legacy, objective difficulties—whatever it takes.
And those who actually made the decision: "take the asset at any cost, even if it destroys the business"—they'll write a report. Kulikov will report on the "return of a critical asset to state ownership" and the "launch of production under the management of an appointed manager." He might even receive a bonus for successfully completing a complex project.
In a year or two, it will become clear that production is unprofitable, exports are impossible, and the equipment needs replacing. Another round of "optimization" will begin. The asset will be written off, transferred to some Rostec structure, or sold to pay off debts. And Kulikov, with a new mandate, will go take inventory of the next asset—for example, a medical implant manufacturing plant, which also "must be returned."
6. This is not a mistake, it's policy.
One could blame everything on the personal incompetence of Kulikov and his team. But that would be wrong. Because there's a systemic choice behind this.
The state, which in the early 2010s tried to build global technology companies (albeit with an offshore structure) through Chubais and Rusnano, is making a different choice today. It prefers control to development. It doesn't need a global leader with independent management, but a controlled asset that, even if unprofitable, doesn't create the risks of "technology leakage" and "uncontrolled elites."
From this perspective, the seizure of OCSiAl isn't a mistake, but a consistent policy. The technology has been "returned." The plant is "under control." The fact that businesses are collapsing, markets are lost, and scientists are leaving or are under investigation are costs that aren't accounted for in the budget.
In lieu of a conclusion: an epitaph for a Russian "unicorn"
Someday, technology historians will analyze this case. They'll write: "Russia created a unique technology that allowed it to capture 97% of the global market." But instead of building on this success, the state decided to "return" the assets, sueing the scientist who had ensured it. The project was destroyed. The creators left. Production was mothballed."
And they will add: "None of those who made the decision were held accountable. On the contrary, they received new positions and bonuses. It wasn't a crime. It was politics."
And we, contemporaries, can only watch as people whose main talent is counting chairs arrive at the site where, not long ago, they were creating a product that changed global industry. They will take inventory. Appoint a manager. Write a report. And then they will go on to take inventory.
And nanotubes, which could have made Russia the leader of the new industrial revolution, will become yet another monument to how this country "rescues" from talented people what they themselves created."
