Four startups share $100,000 in Astana Hub Battle awards
Four teams win at Kazakhstan’s AI & Digital Bridge forum, with additional grant and computing support reported by the organiser.
6 Oct 2026
Education, AI training data, industrial robotics and security were represented among the winners at Kazakhstan’s AI & Digital Bridge forum.
Four startups each won $25,000 at Astana Hub Battle 2026 in Astana: CYBERPACK.AI, NCSpeech, Astana Dynamics and Aman. The organiser announced the results on October 3, following a competition that received 292 applications from 14 countries.
CYBERPACK.AI took the Impact Maker award, NCSpeech won Market Shaper, Astana Dynamics received Growth Engine, and Aman was selected for Investor’s Choice. Together, the four awards account for the competition’s $100,000 prize pool.
The winners address different problems. In its finalist guide, Astana Hub describes CYBERPACK.AI as a learning ecosystem that uses projects and competitions to develop scientists and engineers. NCSpeech collects AI training data through super-apps in emerging markets. Astana Dynamics builds robots to identify faults at industrial facilities before they cause accidents, while Aman works on detecting and preventing security threats.
The selection narrowed from 50 semifinalists to 14 finalists. The October 2 preview scheduled the final for October 3, with each team allocated three minutes to present and two minutes for questions. The semifinal judging panel included representatives from venture funds and ecosystem organisations, including Domino VC, Astana Hub Ventures, White Hill Capital and IT Park Uzbekistan.
Other finalists illustrated the range of applications competing for attention: Hi Doctor develops virtual-patient tools for medical education, Spacelab works on satellite communications, and AuaSense focuses on air-quality monitoring.
Support extended beyond the main prizes. Astana Hub also reported a separate $200,000 grant for Aman from MA7 Ventures. Yandex Kazakhstan provided Pulsar AI with cloud resources valued at 10 million tenge, while Kazakhtelecom supplied M3TRIQ with GPU resources valued at $25,000.