Revenues Of Russian IT Companies Dip In Several Years.

Moscow; May 2026: Revenues of the Russian IT sector by the end of 2025 fell for the first time in several years ranging between 60 billion rubles to 7.94 trillion rubles, despite the growth in the number of companies in the industry. The number of IT Entities increased by 3.5%, leading to increased competition and a possible wave of mergers, according to market experts. Participant’s attribute this to the fragmentation of mid-sized companies, the emergence of new AI players, and the shift of competition to the same relatively simple niches.

For the first time in several years, the Russian IT sector experienced a slight decline in total revenue. According to analysts at Kontur Fokus and Kontur Egida, by the end of 2025, revenue for companies with core activities in information technology, software development, and related services (OKVED 62 and 63) decreased by 60 billion rubles, or 0.75%, to 7.94 trillion rubles. From 2022 to 2024, the industry demonstrated robust growth: from 5.34 trillion rubles to 8.01 trillion rubles (a CAGR of approximately 22.5%).

Meanwhile, the number of legal entities in the IT sector continues to gradually increase. During the period between May 01, 2024 to May 01, 2026, their number grew by 3.5%, from 81,500 to 84,400. However, “it is becoming more difficult for the market to maintain previous revenue growth rates”, said Daniil Borislavsky, an expert at Kontur Egida. According to him, amid active import substitution and digitalisation, companies grew rapidly in 2022–2024, but by 2025, some players faced declining corporate budgets, rising development costs, and intensifying competition.

Meanwhile, the share of loss-making legal entities in the IT sector remains negligible at 0.01%. The regional picture is uneven. In major IT hubs such as Moscow and St. Petersburg, the share of companies with zero revenue decreased from 5.12% to 4.70% and from 5.18% to 4.97% respectively, while in the Leningrad, Irkutsk, and Novosibirsk regions and Perm Krai, it increased by 0.5 to 0.8 percentage points. The highest percentage of ‘zero-profit’ IT firms was recorded in Buryatia (11.51%), Karachay-Cherkessia, and North Ossetia (10.53% each), although the absolute number of such companies there is small.

According to Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Grigorenko, revenues of Russian IT companies grew by 17% year-on-year in the first half of 2025, reaching 5.5 trillion rubles. He also noted that the amount of taxes and insurance premiums paid by companies exceeded 1 trillion rubles, representing a 20% increase.

Market participants attribute the stagnation in total revenue to changes in the industry’s structure. New companies are emerging for two reasons, according to CorpSoft24 CEO Konstantin Renzyaev:

• First, mid-sized companies are disbanding, allowing management to create new businesses.

• Second, a new field of work in AI has emerged, leading to the emergence of new small companies.

Meanwhile, he notes, revenue is declining for everyone, regardless of size, and some large players are “creating fictitious turnover figures for reporting purposes”.

According to organisations, competition is shifting to the same relatively simple niches: “To certain areas where quick results can be achieved. Meanwhile, vendors are unwilling to invest in more quality-critical, truly relevant areas”, says Evgeny Surkov, head of product development at Nextby. This behavior, he believes, could signal a decline in overall revenue in the domestic IT sector.

However, the decline in revenue isn’t universal across all segments. “The IT services market as a whole has stopped showing explosive budget growth, but this situation can’t be extrapolated to all segments”, notes Anton Basharin, Senior Managing Director of AppSec Solutions. According to him, cybersecurity and artificial intelligence protection continue to grow at an accelerated rate.

According to Maxim Berezin, Director of Business Development at Orion Soft, while vendors previously reliably generated revenue from a pool of regular customers, this approach is now less effective. “30% of our revenue for 2025 will come from projects where we’ve replaced solutions from other Russian vendors, meaning they’ve already replaced imported ones”, he added. The expert also predicts that the infrastructure software segment will expand, and smaller players will face acquisitions or closures.

Team Maverick.