Digital Qazaqstan Battle Final: Winners of the National Startup Competition Announced

Digital Qazaqstan Battle Final: Winners of the National Startup Competition Announced

In Shymkent, on the stage of the Digital Qazaqstan 2026 forum, the country's best technology startups presented their solutions before experts, investors, and the entire innovation ecosystem.

Over the course of several months, startups from all regions of Kazakhstan competed for the chance to take the national stage and contend for a prize fund of 19 million tenge. The Digital Qazaqstan Battle final brought together the country's 20 best projects, all demonstrating real, market-validated technology solutions and the potential to scale nationally and internationally.

Participants presented startups across the fields of AI, smart cities, business process automation, educational technology, and other areas of digital transformation. Finalists included JolScan, aitomaton, Lady Taxi, SanEduPortal, Kasibi Taxi, LoyaBonus, Okushy, CortexAI, Proji, zhihaz.kz, SmetaHub, gro.now, Reco, AR Sana, Qalam, Ai-mektep, Mathlab, Help Hand, KenDala, and Numerus.

The final solutions were assessed by a jury comprising representatives of the state, investors, and the technology community: Kazakhstani serial entrepreneur and one of Central Asia's largest business angels Murat Abdrakhmanov; Freedom Holding Corp. Chief Technology Officer Renat Tukanov; international developer Narikbi Maksut; Higgsfield AI VP of Talent Dalida Yerkuliyeva; and IT community representative Sultan Ilyasov.

Following an intense and memorable final, the jury determined the winners. The top prize of 10,000,000 tenge went to Gro.now (Almaty); second place and 5,000,000 tenge were won by Cortex AI (Kyzylorda); third place and 3,000,000 tenge went to AR Sana (Astana). The audience choice prize of 1,000,000 tenge went to Qalam AI (Shymkent).

  • Gro.now — a platform for marketing research and market analytics.
  • Cortex AI — an AI system for supporting clinical decisions, predicting the risk of kidney transplant rejection.
  • AR Sana — a health-tech platform for children's speech development, creating a unified gamified ecosystem for parents, children, and speech therapists.
  • Qalam AI — a smart pen that remembers everything: you write on paper, the AI recognises the text, analyses it, and structures your notes in a mobile application.

"Reaching the final was an incredible opportunity to test our concept with a national audience and receive expert feedback. We hope our project will bring meaningful change to the industry and help us find new partners for scaling. For us, participating in Digital Qazaqstan Battle is a chance to showcase the potential of our team, demonstrate technological solutions, and confirm that ideas from the regions can compete at the national level," shared Ainur Nuradil, CEO of AR Sana.

The competition was held in several stages: following the submission of applications, projects were assessed for compliance with participation criteria, regional semi-finals were held, and finalists were determined based on their results. The jury evaluated startups on market dynamics, team quality, scalability, and investment attractiveness.

The organisers emphasise that Digital Qazaqstan Battle is not only an opportunity to receive financial support. Finalists gained access to the forum's broad audience, the attention of investors and technology ecosystem representatives, and the chance to consolidate their projects' positions on the national innovation stage.

"Digital Qazaqstan Battle shows that strong technology projects are born not only in major cities but also in the regions. The final served as a genuine platform for the exchange of experience, the building of connections with investors and international experts, and confirmation of the participants' high level of competence," noted Ashimbek Abilgazinov, Director of the Business Programmes Office at Astana Hub.

General partner — Freedom Bank. Platinum partner — Alageum Electric. Gold partner — Kazakhtelecom. Innovation partners — WSE, Damumed. Partner — Visa. Organisers: Ministry of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development of Kazakhstan, Shymkent city administration, and Astana Hub.