Dentons advises Zyfra on a joint venture to develop digital solutions in the oil and gas industry with Gazprom Neft

Dentons’ lawyers have assisted Zyfra Group, a development leader of Industrial Internet of Things and AI solutions, in a transaction with Gazprom Neft PJSC to set up a joint venture focusing on developing software for the extractive industry. Next year the JV plans to create a market version of a digital industrial platform. The JV’s digital products will be designed to centralize real-time control and create digital twins using artificial intelligence technologies.

Dentons’ work on the project was coordinated by Georgy Pchelintsev, a partner in Dentons’ Russia IP, IT and Telecommunications practice, who worked with St. Petersburg Corporate and M&A practice colleagues Partner Evgenia Teterevkova and Associate Viacheslav Gareev. Work on the project included detailed review and negotiations regarding the commercial terms for setting up, financing and operating the JV, contributing and exercising intellectual property rights, and complex issues of corporate governance, resolution of deadlock and the project participants’ development of the JV.

Dentons Partner Georgy Pchelintsev said: “We are happy that we contributed to setting up a JV that will develop and implement breakthrough technology solutions for the Russian extractive industry. This project is notable for the scale of the JV’s activity and the complexity of the negotiations in which we needed to consider both parties’ interests and help to work out compromise business and legal solutions that will lay a solid foundation for the JV to operate and develop effectively, creating unique products for the entire industry and the global market. Technology JV projects are some of the most interesting projects because they require the most long-term solutions, in contrast, for example, to asset acquisitions.”