Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.uz) — The first national study of Kazakhstan’s startup ecosystem, Kazakhstan Startup Landscape 2026, was presented at the AI & Digital Bridge 2026 forum in Astana. The study was prepared by RISE Research & Advisory together with Astana Hub and Sapa Group, with the support of Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development.
A separate section of the study focuses on the profile of startup founders, including their age, education, entrepreneurial and international experience, as well as team structures.
According to the study, the most common profile of a Kazakh founder is a man aged between 31 and 40 with higher education. This age group accounts for 42% of surveyed founders, while 82% have higher education.
In particular, 42% of founders hold a bachelor’s degree, 29% a master’s degree, 7% an MBA and another 4% a PhD or candidate of sciences degree. At the same time, 33% of founders came to startups from engineering or software development.
A technical co-founder is present in 57% of early-stage startups and 63% of scalable companies. Founders under the age of 26 account for 18% of respondents. Nearly one in five teams has experience working for international technology companies at the Big Tech level.
The study also found a significant share of entrepreneurs with previous business experience. Around 56% of founders had previously launched their own business or entrepreneurial project.
International experience is reported by 58% of respondents. Of these, 20% worked abroad, 18% studied in other countries and 16% sold their products or services in foreign markets. According to the study, companies at both early and scaling stages consider international markets one of their priorities.
Women account for 21% of founders among the companies surveyed. This is above the global figure of 15% cited in the study. At least one female founder is present in 29% of Kazakh startups.
At the same time, the investment side of the ecosystem remains predominantly male. Yana Ten, founder of Aneesa AI, noted that women remain underrepresented among investment analysts, investors and fund representatives, which, in her view, creates additional challenges for women seeking investment.
Aknur Abdikarim, co-founder of the Central Asian Ladies Initiative, highlighted the professional and technical expertise of women founders from Central Asia, including in healthcare, finance, robotics and neuroscience.
According to the study, team structures also depend on the stage of business development. Among scalable companies, 53% started with two or more founders, compared with 41% of early-stage companies. A single founder was present at launch in 59% of early-stage companies and 47% of scalable companies.
Thus, team-based models become more common as companies develop, although the single-founder model also remains widespread.
The Kazakhstan Startup Landscape 2026 study is based on the RISE Research & Advisory database, which includes more than 1,500 Kazakh startups and technology companies, publicly disclosed venture deals since 2018, a startup survey and 30 in-depth interviews with founders of scalable companies.
The survey received 682 responses. After checking and consolidating confirmed duplicate submissions, 602 valid responses were included in the study.
The authors note that the data characterise the companies that participated in the study and do not constitute a census of Kazakhstan’s entire startup ecosystem. Young companies and participants in ecosystem programmes were overrepresented among respondents.
