More than 300 enterprises and startups, 200-plus speakers, 100 investors from 50 countries convene as a region of history, scale, and new ambition steps forward on the global stage
Kazakhstan signalled a seismic shift in its economic trajectory today as the inaugural GITEX AI Central Asia & Caucasus Kazakhstan, the region’s largest tech and AI event, opened in Almaty in a defining moment for a nation that has now emerged as the centre of AI ambition across Central Asia and the Caucasus.
Held at the Atakent International Exhibition Centre, the two-day event from 4-5 May 2026 brings together 336 tech enterprises and startups, more than 100 investors, and 200-plus speakers from 50 countries, alongside thousands of senior tech and business attendees – marking the largest and most international gathering of its kind in the region.
Under the High Patronage of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, H.E. Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, GITEX AI Central Asia & Caucasus Kazakhstan is hosted by the Ministry of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development, in partnership with Astana Hub and the Akimat of the City of Almaty.
The landmark event is organised by inD, the global organiser of GITEX, convening key decision-makers across government, industry, and academia, united by a shared purpose of forging a new economic generation for Central Asia and the world.
Kazakhstan’s emergence as a regional AI leader is backed by the 2026 Kazakhstan AI Country Report, which found that large-scale AI adoption could add up to two percent to annual GDP growth, while venture investment in the country’s AI sector has surged more than fivefold in just two years.
Against this backdrop of accelerating momentum, on the morning of the first day of GITEX AI Kazakhstan, the second session of the Kazakhstan Council for AI Development took place, chaired by President H.E. Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, with Zhaslan Madiyev, Deputy Prime Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development as Secretary of the Council. The AI Council meeting convened with an audience of more than 150 VIP guests, including global dignitaries, ministers, and senior tech executives.
At the AI Council meeting, President H.E. Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, said: “We are seeing a paradigm shift where AI is a new engine of growth. To achieve this, we need to build a unified system of data, processes and people. Only then we can move from pilot solutions to large-scale implementation of AI across all spheres of life.”
President H.E. Kassym-Jomart Tokayev then toured the exhibition, before the show’s official inauguration ceremony with government partners and organisers. At the inauguration, Zhaslan Madiev, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development of the Republic of Kazakhstan, said: “We are proud to host the first regional edition of GITEX, Central Asia and the Caucasus, in Kazakhstan.
“Kazakhstan became a leading economy in terms of digital transformation in the region, ranking top 10 in terms of quality of digital services and top 24 in terms of e-government development. Artificial intelligence is one of the most important and priority areas set by the leadership of the country, with a five-year concept to develop AI in Kazakhstan.”
Smagulov Olzhas, Deputy Akim of Almaty City, said: “Today, more than half of Kazakhstan’s IT services are concentrated here in Almaty, and we are going further. We plan to launch 140 square meters of new infrastructure of IT hubs, innovation centres, and tech companies. Yet infrastructure is only a part of the story. Our goal is to build a full-scale ecosystem, and this is where GITEX plays a key role. The international presence here at GITEX AI Kazakhstan shows a high level of partnership and trust in Almaty, as a place where global ideas meet, grow, and turn into real projects.”
Trixie LohMirmand, CEO of GITEX Global worldwide, added: “Whether you’re from a developed market or a very ambitious rising economy, everybody wants to be where the future is built. And it is very clear, it’s going to be built in Kazakhstan. This nation has the people, the commitment, the conviction, and as we’ve heard from His Excellency, the Minister of AI and Digital Development, the clarity of vision to participate in the shaping of the global intelligence economy.”
Tech titans converge at Central Asia’s digital frontier
Global and regional tech leaders showcased solutions addressing Central Asia’s rapidly expanding digital infrastructure market, driven by data centre investment and cross-border connectivity. Atlassian, Beeline, Cisco, Dell, Hikvision, Huawei, H3C, Kazakhtelecom, Lenovo, Presight, Redington, and Salesforce headlined the exhibition floor, with their latest products spanning AI and machine learning, cloud and hyperscale infrastructure, cybersecurity, fintech and blockchain, 5G, and smart city technologies.
Huawei, which has operated in Kazakhstan for nearly three decades and whose solutions today cover approximately 85 percent of the country’s population, showcased its GovTech 1.0 framework – first unveiled at GITEX GLOBAL in Dubai last October – alongside its Atlas 950 SuperPoD, presenting a regional AI infrastructure strategy for Central Asia and the Caucasus.
American-headquartered Dell featured its AI Factory, an end-to-end platform integrating infrastructure, large language models, retrieval-augmented generation, AI agents, and MLOps (Machine Learning Operations) in a single deployable stack. The AI Factory is directly relevant to governments and industries across the region, with use-cases demonstrated across public services, fraud detection, and infrastructure monitoring.
That global participation is matched by the full force of Kazakhstan and Central Asian tech under one roof, including Kazakhtelecom, the state-owned telco titan commanding over 60 percent of Kazakhstan’s market; Beeline, Kazakhstan’s only major independent mobile operator; Akashi Data Center, Astana’s Tier IV data centre, the first and largest in Eurasia; Uzinfocom, Uzbekistan’s sole state integrator powering its e-government ecosystem; and AzInTelecom, Azerbaijan’s sovereign cloud backbone, now home to its national AI supercomputer.
Elsewhere, UAE-based Presight, a leading global AI company, showcased its full suite of applied intelligence solutions grounded in the ongoing work already being done in Kazakhstan alongside government and national institutions.
“Central Asia has a unique opportunity to scale digital transformation into AI enabled infrastructure, embedding intelligence directly into the systems that power government, industry, and economic growth,” said Magzhan Kenesbai, Chief Growth Officer of Presight.
“The focus is shifting toward integrating real time decision intelligence across sectors to enable more proactive, resilient, and efficient national systems. In markets like Kazakhstan, where there is strong alignment between national ambition and investment in infrastructure, AI can accelerate this transition by connecting systems, enabling sovereign data and compute, and unlocking long-term economic value at scale.”
Strategic MoUs Pair Compute Ambition with Power Generation
A series of strategic Memoranda of Understanding were signed on the opening day, reinforcing Kazakhstan’s role as a regional anchor for AI development and cross-border digital cooperation.
In a landmark pair of agreements, Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development announced plans to develop a Tier III/Tier IV data centre campus with an initial capacity of 150–200 MW, designed to attract global technology companies and hyperscale providers and to support Kazakhstan’s emergence as a regional digital infrastructure hub. The data centre project will be developed by JMOT04.
In parallel, the Ministry of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development and the Ministry of Energy of the Republic of Kazakhstan formalised plans for a dedicated combined-cycle gas turbine power plant fuelled by natural gas and green energy project. The plant is intended to provide reliable, large-scale power supply for the data centre campus, with the broader project ultimately targeting hyperscale capacity of 300 MW to 1 GW. The power plant will be developed by Ample Solution Limited.
Together, the agreements signal Kazakhstan’s intent to address the energy infrastructure challenge that has historically constrained digital investment across Central Asia by pairing compute ambition with the power generation required to sustain it.
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