For much of its modern history, Kazakhstan’s global economic image has been defined by oil, gas, and mineral wealth. Today, however, its leadership is betting that the next chapter will be written not in barrels or tonnes, but in lines of code and terabytes of data. Artificial intelligence (AI) has become a strategic national priority, anchored in a broader effort to transform Kazakhstan into a digital nerve center linking Europe and Asia.
President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has made AI a matter of national independence as much as economic growth. He has argued that without mastering AI, Kazakhstan risks falling behind in a world where the technology is reshaping industries, labour markets, and geopolitics. As a result, a comprehensive AI development program is in the works, designed to integrate AI into the real economy, digitalise government processes, and embed the technology into public services from healthcare to education.
Laying the Foundations for Digital Sovereignty
Delivering on such a vision requires strong institutional mechanisms. That is where Kazakhstan’s newly established Digital Transformation Group comes in. This “digital headquarters” brings together top government figures to drive AI adoption across priority sectors, from manufacturing to municipal services. It is tasked with clearing the bottlenecks that often slow technological change: fragmented IT systems, underdeveloped regulation, and inconsistent cybersecurity protocols. The group’s work signals that AI integration will be coordinated at the highest political level rather than left to the discretion of individual agencies.
Infrastructure is the other cornerstone of this transformation. In July 2025, the government launched the QazTech sovereign digital platform, a unified IT backbone for state and quasi-state institutions. QazTech’s architecture ensures interoperability, reduces duplication, and strengthens security. By early 2026, all new government digital systems will be developed on this platform unless technical constraints dictate otherwise. The move is part of a broader trend in which states seek to consolidate critical digital infrastructure within their own jurisdiction – what policymakers in Astana call “digital sovereignty.”
Cybersecurity and data protection are inseparable from that concept. Tokayev has warned of the risks AI itself can generate, from deepfake manipulation to biometric identity theft. Kazakhstan experienced more than 40 significant data leaks in 2025 alone. One response is the migration of all official communications involving personal data to Aitu, a secure domestically developed messenger. At the same time, the government is moving to establish unified cybersecurity standards and streamline oversight to ensure quicker responses to emerging threats.
Building Skills and Attracting Global Partners
But a digital economy is only as strong as its people. Kazakhstan’s approach recognises that building infrastructure and passing regulations is insufficient without a skilled workforce. The AI-Sana programme aims to train one million AI-capable workers within five years, starting with students and extending to teacher upskilling. The goal is to embed AI literacy into the national curriculum, ensuring that programming, robotics, and data analysis become as familiar to future graduates as mathematics and literature.
The country is also investing in more specialised training hubs. The Alem.ai International AI Center functions as both a research and startup incubation space. It hosts the Tomorrow School and Tumo Center for Creative Technologies, which together will train over 1,000 students and 1,000 professionals each year in advanced digital skills. Such institutions are meant to retain local talent and attract foreign specialists, critical in a field where global competition for expertise is fierce.
Kazakhstan’s leadership is courting major technology firms, including Google, Telegram, EPAM, Tether, to establish research presences in the country. The recently introduced Neo Nomad Visa is aimed at attracting highly skilled foreign digital professionals, bolstering Kazakhstan’s credentials as an open and connected innovation hub.
This year saw the launch of Central Asia’s largest supercomputer cluster, designed for AI model training, big data analytics, and complex simulations. Rules are being developed to ensure fair access, with priority given to national projects and promising startups. Among the early beneficiaries is KazLLM, Kazakhstan’s first large language model, tailored to support applications in education, public services, and media while preserving linguistic diversity.
These developments feed into another of Kazakhstan’s goals: becoming a significant player in IT outsourcing. The Astana Hub innovation ecosystem now hosts over 1,700 IT companies, including 400 with foreign investment. Its mix of tax incentives, visa facilitation, and venture capital access is attracting regional and international clients. The government’s target of $5 billion in IT product and service exports by 2030 is ambitious, but achievable if the current growth trajectory holds.
Bridging the Connectivity Gap
Connectivity remains an essential ingredient, especially in a country of Kazakhstan’s size. On August 13, SpaceX’s Starlink service officially launched nationwide, bringing high-speed satellite internet to remote and rural communities. Combined with ongoing fibre-optic expansion, this will help ensure that digital transformation is not confined to major cities but reaches the small towns and villages that make up much of the country’s social and economic fabric.
Sceptics might question whether such rapid transformation is possible in a country still better known for its energy exports than its tech startups. But Kazakhstan is not starting from zero. Its e-government services are among the most advanced in the region, its digital competitiveness rankings are climbing, and its leaders are demonstrating both the political will and the institutional framework to turn strategy into action. The risk, as with any national transformation, lies in execution – ensuring that policies survive changes in leadership, that investments are sustained over time, and that the benefits of digitisation are shared widely across society.
If these challenges can be met, Kazakhstan’s gamble on AI and digital transformation could pay off. The country would not just diversify its economy but reposition itself in the global order as a node in the digital networks linking East and West. The world will soon see whether it succeeds.
