Winners of the alem.ai battle received 25 million tenge

The national AI project competition alem.ai battle concluded at the venue of the International Artificial Intelligence Center alem.ai, gathering approximately 830 applications from all regions of Kazakhstan. Twenty of the strongest teams advanced to the final.

In a year marked by digitalization and artificial intelligence, the competition became one of the largest initiatives in the AI sector, bringing together schoolchildren, students, startups, and researchers. The initiative covers the full lifecycle of AI solution development — from initial prototypes to projects with confirmed demand and real users.

The competition was conducted across four key categories. Winners were determined in each category based on the results.

In the AI Young Talents category for schoolchildren, the victory went to the project SuGuard. The team developed an AI system for non-invasive assessment of blood glucose levels and early detection of diabetes risk. As a prize, participants received gaming laptops to further develop and scale their idea.

In the AI Driving Power category for students, the winning team was Ustaz AI, which received 5 million tenge. Their platform takes over a significant portion of teachers' routine work: it generates assignments, creates educational materials, and helps manage the educational process. This allows educators to focus on more meaningful work with students.

In the AI Innovators category for researchers, the winning project was Robio, which received 7 million tenge. This is an AI-powered hardware solution — a tactile glove with artificial intelligence that helps doctors detect breast lumps with jeweler-like precision at early stages. The technology digitizes the palpation process, turning subjective sensations into precise measurable data and enabling the detection of neoplasms, their size, and location. According to the team, the system demonstrates approximately 90% accuracy and surpasses human perception in several parameters. The project has already passed validation on prototypes and is preparing for clinical trials.

In the AI Future Builders category for startups, the grand prize of 10 million tenge went to the project NCSpeech. This is a decentralized service that integrates into SuperApps and turns users' waiting time into valuable AI assets, allowing for the collection of high-quality "live" datasets for model training. The solution addresses one of the key market challenges — the shortage of real-world data, especially for sovereign models and rare languages. The project has already demonstrated confirmed traction and experience working with corporate clients, including international markets, and has attracted pre-seed investment from Antler.

The evaluation of projects was carried out by an expert jury, which included leading representatives of the venture industry and technology business: Askar Belisbekov, CEO of Qazaqstan Venture Group LTD; Ruslan Rakhymbay, Investment Director of Quest Ventures; Bakhtiyor Eshonkulov, CEO of Astana Hub Cloud; Rinata Ilyubaeva, CEO of Tumar Innovation Hub; and Aslan Sultanov, founder of White Hill Capital.

The organizer of the competition was Astana Hub, with the support of the Ministry of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

alem.ai battle is part of the strategic initiative alem.ai, aimed at developing human capital and forming a new generation of specialists in the field of artificial intelligence.

Source: gov.kz