Central Asian experts call for unified AI startup ecosystem

Opening the discussion, Dauren Rakhimzhanov noted that the regional ecosystem is expanding rapidly thanks to progress in infrastructure, legislation, access to venture capital, and human capital. He stressed the important role of strong national hubs within Central Asia as well as those representing the region abroad.

Adding to that, Rahym Bayramli emphasized Central Asia’s specific advantages, highlighting its young and dynamic population as well as political stability that encourages long-term investments. Bayramli also added that AI is a global industry, making international partnerships crucial.

Later in the session, he pointed to two areas for improvement: the need for unified definitions and rules across the region to ease startup expansion, and the importance of regional venture funds to ensure scale and sustainable returns.

“They should be bridging the gaps, investing in one country, and helping their portfolio startups from one region to easily expand to all the other regions, to prepare them to jump basically from local to regional. That will give them the right foundation to then try to jump from the regional status to a global one,” he said.

In turn, Chubak Temirov emphasized geography and demographics as strengths. According to him, Central Asia’s strategic location between East and West offers economic growth opportunities despite being largely landlocked. He also pointed to the region’s young and well-educated workforce, as well as recent positive trends in regional integration and joint initiatives.

“I think that if we, as a region, position ourselves as a united region — just like colleagues mentioned examples of Latin America or the Middle East — then we too can secure a significant share of the global ICT and AI market,” Temirov said.

During the session, Radzhabov pointed to the growing imbalance between supply and demand for junior specialists, noting that while new IT graduates enter the market annually, companies are reducing hiring — especially at the entry level — as AI solutions can often replace basic tasks at far lower costs. He warned that without opportunities for juniors, the pipeline of mid- and senior-level experts could suffer.

“Curricula should not focus on preparing front-end, back-end, or other basic IT specialists, but should quickly shift toward training AI engineers and prompt engineers. I believe demand in these areas will grow significantly. And if we act quickly to make the right changes, we will be able to supply the global market with AI specialists on a large scale,” he explained, addressing the education of young professionals.

Tanat Uskembayev, Managing Director of Astana Hub, concluded that alignment between countries is essential for developing startups, venture capital, and R&D.

“Ecosystems across countries need to work together in developing startups, venture capital, and research. I fully agree with this. The main insight for all of us is that by combining our efforts, we can achieve meaningful results much faster,” he said.

Earlier today, Bagdat Mussin stated that startups using artificial intelligence are becoming an important element in the development of Kazakhstan’s healthcare sector.