Kazakhstan has unveiled the most powerful supercomputer in Central Asia as part of its push to strengthen digital infrastructure and artificial intelligence capacity. The high-speed system, capable of around 2 exaflops or two quintillion floating-point operations per second, was launched at the Alem.cloud supercomputer centre in Astana. Officials say the machine will be used both to power the country’s e-government services, which have become an essential platform for citizens and businesses, and to accelerate the development of artificial intelligence models and engines. President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, who initiated the Concept of the Development of AI in Kazakhstan until 2029, personally pressed the button to activate the supercomputer at the launch ceremony.
The government sees the supercomputer as a foundation for Kazakhstan’s digital sovereignty, with experts and policymakers arguing that no country can achieve independence and long-term success without localised infrastructure and solutions. Tokayev described the project as a milestone in the digitalisation of key sectors of the economy and science, and a catalyst for the creation of new technologies and services. Senior Expert of the Data Center Infrastructure Service at Nazarbayev University Boris Potapchuk noted that the AI cluster will allow for more efficient use of state resources by assembling and centralising information systems currently spread across different institutions, making data more accessible to citizens while improving storage and security. However, Kazakhstan has experienced data safety issues, including a large-scale breach discovered last month affecting the personal details of up to 16 million citizens. The Ministry of Digital Development is investigating the incident, which reportedly involved leaks from private, non-governmental databases.
Kazakhstan’s e-government strategy began in 2004 and has since digitalised 92 percent of public services, with eight million citizens now using digital signatures. The country ranks 24th out of 193 nations in the UN’s 2024 E-Government Development Index. Despite these gains, the central focus of government policy remains on developing AI. In 2024, a draft law on AI was approved and a Committee on AI was established to oversee progress in the field. The new supercomputer is housed in a Tier III data centre, providing experts the chance to gain hands-on experience in cooling, stabilisation, failure detection, and cybersecurity. At the launch, several homegrown solutions were showcased, including the Kazakh-language large language model AlemLLM, a system for early detection of forest fires, and innovations in medicine, construction, and education.
AI specialists have long warned that heavy reliance on global systems could marginalise non-Western languages, which spurred Kazakhstan’s investment in a national Kazakh-language large language model. There are already six supercomputers at different universities across the country for research and AI development. Waqar Ahmad, President of Nazarbayev University, said that as new systems emerge with voice recognition, image processing, and multimodal functions, Kazakhstan will require even greater computing power to build advanced models beyond the text-based KazLLM. Potapchuk, however, expressed caution over whether the new system will be used primarily for applying existing models rather than developing new ones, highlighting the scale of the challenge.
Another obstacle is the brain drain of highly skilled IT professionals, which Potapchuk called a major concern. He emphasised that a supercomputer of this scale needs continuous modernisation and maintenance by top-tier specialists. While foreign experts will not have access due to the sensitivity of state data, the government hopes the facility itself will become a training ground for domestic talent, albeit with limited access to confidential information. Minister of Digital Transformation Zhaslan Madiyev underscored that digital development is now as crucial for national sovereignty as energy or food security. He described the launch of the national supercomputer centre as a strategic step to build an AI ecosystem capable of competing globally.
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