The official presentation of the Kazakhstan AI Country Report was held in Astana on January 28. It is the country’s first comprehensive overview of the AI market, covering government strategy, digital and computing infrastructure, human capital, startups, venture investments, and industry use cases of AI implementation. The report was prepared by the analytical agency RISE Research in partnership with Mastercard and Freedom Bank, with the support of the Ministry of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development of Kazakhstan and GITEX AI Central Asia & Caucasus.
According to the report, Kazakhstan has developed a rapidly growing startup ecosystem in the field of artificial intelligence. The country is home to more than 100 AI startups, and the volume of venture investments in AI projects increased more than fivefold between 2023 and 2025, from approximately $14 million to $73 million, with AI now accounting for more than half of all venture investments in Kazakhstan.
Kazakhstan is moving from digitalization to the large-scale adoption of artificial intelligence, which is viewed as a key driver of economic growth and a tool for strengthening the country’s international competitiveness. The report estimates that the adoption of AI could generate an additional 0.5%-2% annual increase in Kazakhstan’s GDP in the medium term by boosting productivity across more than half of all jobs.
Dmitry Mun, Deputy Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development stated: “Kazakhstan is implementing a comprehensive, institutionally embedded AI strategy, which includes the adoption of a dedicated Artificial Intelligence Law, the creation of a National AI Platform, the development of sovereign computing infrastructure, support for Kazakh-language large language models (LLMs), the launch of the international AI center Alem.ai, and large-scale human capital development programs. As a result, by 2025 around 1 million specialists had already been trained in AI-related skills, and by 2030, it is planned to equip 5 million citizens with basic and advanced AI skills.”
The report notes that computing capacity is no longer a critical constraint for AI development, thanks to the launch of two new AI clusters—Alem.Cloud and AI-Farabium by Kazakhtelecom JSC, with a combined capacity of approximately 3.6 exaflops.
Kazakhstan’s financial sector, telecommunications, electronic government services (eGov), retail, and IT, where AI is widely used in customer service, marketing, and analytics, are leading the pace of AI adoption.
At the same time, the government is placing a strategic emphasis on the adoption of AI in the production industries, agriculture, transport and logistics, energy, education, and healthcare. The report also highlights both the strengths and structural constraints of the AI market. Key advantages include government support, investments in sovereign computing infrastructure and skills development, a high level of digital maturity of the economy, and a growing startup ecosystem. An additional factor is the country’s young and educated population: in 2025, 21% of graduates chose engineering and ICT-related fields. At the same time, further scaling of AI is constrained by a shortage of high-quality industry-specific data, uneven access to infrastructure and competencies across the country’s regions, low levels of R&D funding, a lack of experienced specialists, and limited access to late-stage venture capital.
