AI board member of Kazakh wealth fund reports to Prime Minister

SKAI shared statistics on support for domestic manufacturers / Collage by Kursiv.media, photo editor: Adelina Mamedova

Kazakh Prime Minister Olzhas Bektenov held a meeting of the board of directors of Kazakhstan’s national wealth fund Samruk-Kazyna, attended by the fund’s digital board member with voting rights — SKAI (Samruk-Kazyna Artificial Intelligence).

The neural network is powered by Alem LLM, a large Kazakh-language model, and was presented to President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev at the 2025 Digital Bridge international forum.

During the meeting, participants reviewed the fund’s performance results for the first nine months of 2025 and the implementation of the president’s instructions on major infrastructure projects.

Nurlan Zhakupov, chairman of the board of directors, noted that the financial indicators demonstrate steady positive dynamics over the period. Production results are in line with targets, and fund disbursement for major investment projects stands at 99%.

Bektenov emphasized the importance of enhancing support for domestic manufacturers. According to SKAI, the procurement volume from Kazakhstani companies increased by 75% to reach 721 billion tenge (approximately $1.35 billion). In total, 7,227 agreements were signed with 497 suppliers, compared to 411 billion tenge ($768.9 million) and 516 companies last year. The neural network also forecasted that the fund could surpass its annual plan, partly due to the deal to purchase locomotives from a domestic manufacturer owned by Wabtec.

According to Samruk-Kazyna, SKAI has access to all information uploaded on issues reviewed by the board since 2008.

The artificial intelligence system analyzes financial, operational, and market data, identifies patterns, and proposes solutions. SKAI’s operations are fully localized in Kazakhstan — all data is stored securely on Kazakhtelecom’s GPU cluster.

Among similar developments, Albania stands out for introducing an artificial intelligence-powered bot, Diella, as a «minister» to oversee public procurement and combat corruption in September.