A young woman in a sleek bun and a jacket with Kazakh patterns smiles from the screen at a directors’ meeting of Samruk-Kazyna, Kazakhstan’s sovereign wealth fund. In late 2025, she became the company’s newest board member. But SKAI (or Samruk-Kazyna Artificial Intelligence) is not the first woman to join the all-male board: She is the first artificial intelligence programme with voting rights to support the company’s push for greater transparency and better governance.
In Kazakhstan, AI is the new talk of the town, and part of its new branding and modernisation agenda to improve public services, attract investment and diversify the economy beyond reliance on raw materials. President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev declared 2026 the “Year of Digitalisation and Artificial Intelligence” to introduce advanced technologies in all sectors of the economy, develop skills, startups and Kazakh-language technologies. In 2025, the government created a Ministry of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development, and last month, it approved an action plan through 2029 that includes promoting AI literacy in schools and universities, digitalising healthcare, public services, tax collection and the energy sector.
In 2025, Kazakhstan became the second jurisdiction, after the European Union, to pass a law governing AI. In the futuristic ball-shaped EXPO building in the capital Astana, a new AI museum invites visitors to wander through digital installations and robots, try AI models and immerse themselves in an otherworldly experience. At the nearby Astana Hub, the largest innovation cluster in Central Asia, which runs the museum, hundreds of schoolchildren are taught programming, generative artificial intelligence, 3D animation, and motion design – for free.
For adults, the “Tomorrow School” seeks to develop Kazakhstan’s brightest tech talents. Of the 25,000 applications that we have received, we took less than 2 percent of the most talented people.” The candidates first play a logic and memory game to select those with the best potential. Then, during an intensive four-week course called the “Pool”, organisers select a student cohort to participate in training for two years.
While Kazakhstan’s AI push has made it a pioneer in the region, it “is still far away from becoming a Silicon Valley, but it is becoming a regional AI centre”, said Yuri Misnik, chief technology officer at InDrive, a unicorn company actively training a new generation of IT specialists in Kazakhstan. This month, pools open in 12 Kazakh regions. This is a real social elevator,” Tio said.
Astana Hub also has a startup incubator, which helps to create new teams, develop IT products, and sell them to other markets. They partner with hubs in Dubai, Shanghai, Malaysia and the United Kingdom and closely cooperate with the government. Thanks to that, their residents pay zero tax.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
