The first national assessment of the startup ecosystem in Kazakhstan, titled Kazakhstan Startup Landscape 2026, was presented at the AI & Digital Bridge 2026 forum in Astana. This study was prepared by RISE Research & Advisory in collaboration with Astana Hub and Sapa Group, with support from the Ministry of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development of Kazakhstan.
The research included a dedicated section on the characteristics of startup founders, covering their age, education level, entrepreneurial and international experience, as well as team structure.
According to the findings, the most typical profile of a Kazakh founder is a man aged between 31 and 40 with a higher education. This age group accounted for 42% of surveyed founders, and 82% of them hold a higher education degree.
A breakdown of educational levels shows that 42% of founders have a bachelor's degree, 29% have a master's degree, 7% have an MBA, and another 4% hold a PhD or candidate of sciences degree. Furthermore, 33% of founders came into startups from engineering or software development fields.
In early-stage startups, a technical co-founder is present in 57% of cases, and in scalable companies, this figure rises to 63%. Among respondents, 18% are founders under 26 years old. Nearly one in five teams has experience working in Big Tech level international technology companies.
The study also revealed a significant proportion of entrepreneurs with prior business experience: about 56% of founders had previously launched their own business or project. International experience is reported by 58% of respondents, of whom 20% worked abroad, 18% studied in other countries, and 16% sold their goods or services in foreign markets. According to the study, international markets are a priority for companies at both early and scaling stages.
Women constitute 21% of founders in the surveyed companies, which exceeds the global benchmark of 15% mentioned in the study. At least 29% of Kazakh startups feature at least one female founder.
However, the investment side of the ecosystem remains predominantly male. Yana Ten, founder of Aneesa AI, noted that women are underrepresented among analysts, investors, and fund representatives, which she believes creates additional difficulties for women seeking investment.
Aknur Abdikarim, co-founder of the Central Asian Women's Initiative, emphasized the professional and technical competence of female founders from Central Asia in the fields of healthcare, finance, robotics, and neuroscience.
Team structure also depends on the business development stage. In scalable companies, 53% started with two or more founders, compared to 41% in early-stage companies. At launch, one founder was present in 59% of early-stage companies, while this figure was 47% in scalable companies.
Thus, team models become more common as companies develop, although the single-founder model remains widely prevalent.
The Kazakhstan Startup Landscape 2026 study is based on the database of RISE Research & Advisory, which includes over 1500 Kazakh startups and technology companies, publicly disclosed venture deals since 2018, as well as survey results from startups and 30 in-depth interviews with founders of scalable companies. 682 people participated in the survey, and after verification and consolidation of confirmed duplicates, 602 valid responses were included in the study. The authors note that the data presented characterizes only the companies participating in the study and does not represent comprehensive statistics for the entire Kazakh startup ecosystem; moreover, young companies and participants in ecosystem programs were overrepresented in the survey.