00:30Welcome to EastWestConnect. We're highlighting business and economic developments in Kazakhstan and the wider Central Asia region, connecting with Europe and beyond.
00:39Kazakhstan unveiled its first and largest supercomputer this summer. Powered by NVIDIA chips and built for AI research, it can perform two quintillion calculations per second.
00:48We sat down with Jaslan Madiev, Deputy Prime Minister, overseeing artificial intelligence and digital development to explore how the nation is shaping its AI ecosystem.
01:00We are opening other supercomputer clusters. We have a supercomputer GPU cluster in the U.S., in Silicon Valley, in Texas.
01:07Now opening another supercomputer cluster in Almaty.
01:10So this is the important computing infrastructure that will be available for startups, science centers, research and R&D centers, universities, Samruk Kazina holding company and national companies and government bodies.
01:28So this is for developing of AI agents, AI products and embedding AI into the economy.
01:35On the top of that, we have built several Kazakh large language models, which will be used by those platforms.
01:43And from the digital sovereignty perspective, it's a very important step.
01:48We have our Kazakh LLM on meta, foundational models like LAMA.
01:55We have E-Lightning and Dipsik, and it's open source.
01:58Beyond the first Kazakh large language model, should we expect any other game changers on the horizon?
02:04LMAI, International AI Center, is like a big funnel, starting from the general public and going through the kids, students, startups, big techs.
02:16And the best solutions will be embedded into the economy sector.
02:20It's a big center of competence, 20 plus thousand square meters building, eight floors.
02:26On the second and third floor, we will launch two more education, school kids of age of 12 to 18.
02:34We'll cover 11 areas, generative AI, robotics, 3D modeling, filmmaking, music making.
02:41So the creative industry also will be covered.
02:44On the fourth and fifth floor, we'll be having tomorrow school, launching it together with Nicolas Adirac, a famous entrepreneur from France.
02:53On the sixth floor, we will have AI campus for startups with our acceleration programs.
03:01We are exclusive partner of Google for startups.
03:03We have acceleration program with Draper University, StarTex from Stanford, Alchemist B2B Accelerator.
03:11We have our own homemade accelerator program, AIpreneurs, where people come as individuals.
03:18We give them data sets, GPUs.
03:22We give large language models, and they graduate as startups.
03:26So it will be like the factory of startups.
03:29On the seventh floor, we'll have big tech offices, R&D labs, AI centers.
03:35Mr. Deputy Prime Minister, thank you so much.
03:37Thank you.
03:38My pleasure.
03:38Kazakhstan is positioning itself as Central Asia's gateway to global tech, connecting startups, investors, and policy makers under one roof in Astana.
03:52Over 20,000 innovators, investors, and startups gathered in Astana for the three-day Digital Bridge Forum, Central Asia's largest tech event.
04:01Startups secured tens of thousands of euros in funding as Kazakhstan showcased its growing digital and AI ambitions.
04:08My goal was to create a certain platform, collaborative environment, where, in fact, there are образования, business, governments, big tech companies, ventures.
04:19Among the startups driving this new wave is Neurobox, a compact supercomputer that can replace entire departments in finance and government with its multimodal AI agents.
04:30Running fully offline, it performs 180 trillion operations per second, building AI models without cloud access.
04:37At this year's forum, President Tokayev announced plans to turn digital bridge into an AI bridge, linking Kazakhstan's technological ambitions with the global AI future.
05:03By 2029, Kazakhstan wants to see a hundred new startups every year and raise AI exports to more than 4 billion euros.
05:13Here to assess the effectiveness of the country's AI strategy is a venture investor, Marat Tolubay, CEO of Aktivat Venture Capital.
05:21Mr. Tolubay, welcome.
05:22So my first question is, what would convince investors watching us today to take a closer look at Kazakhstan's AI ecosystem?
05:31The venture market in general, all of our region, Central Asia and Kavkaz, in recent years, has developed a very large time.
05:38And Kazakhstan is the leader of this market.
05:41For example, in 2024, there were startups in all the region, more than 100 million dollars.
05:50And of them, 70 million dollars were invested in Kazakhstan's startups.
05:55Now, we have around 20-25 specialized companies, companies that only invest in startups.
06:04There are around 1,5 thousand startups.
06:07This market is developing very powerful times.
06:10Kazakhstan's startup Hicksfield became the first leader.
06:13He received more than 1 billion dollars in the US.
06:16But there are a number of other Kazakhstan's startup startups that came to the international market.
06:21Do Kazakh startups attract any international co-investors, or are they still largely dependent on domestic capital?
06:29We have a standard scheme that startup, who showed good results on the local market,
06:34he gets invested in Kazakhstan's investors and goes on the international market.
06:39But there are already a number of startups that have already received investment from foreign investors.
06:46The same Hicksfield, Leaping AI, Alma – these startups that have already received investment from American investors.
06:54And here are the major investment from a startup.
06:55Our startup, The startup, The startup made in order for the European fund.
06:59The main reason for now is that the startup startup startup is not to be an Forward,
07:05The startup startup startup with AI at the same time.
07:08They are now intensely not underclassed.
07:12In RISIT, the startup startup startup pays for 1,2 million dollars for the 1 to 2 million dollars in the US.
07:17долларов США и поднимают раунды 200-300 тысяч долларов.
07:22В то время как европейские, допустим, стоят уже 5 и более
07:26миллионов, американские вообще 7-8 миллионов долларов.
07:31И, соответственно, они поднимают там 500 тысяч, миллион
07:34и так далее.
07:35У нас в Казахстане очень талантливые ребята, которые
07:39могут делать точно такие же стартапы, но они стоят
07:43дешевле и сейчас выгодно в них вкладывать деньги
07:46до того, как они превратились в виде народов.
07:49Thank you so much for your insights.
07:50Thank you.
07:53That's all for now.
07:54See you in the next episode of EastWestConnect.
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