Central Asian startups that attracted investments in October 2026

Nomad Venture Studio

Kazakhstan-based Nomad Venture Studio has secured up to $100 million in funding from Singaporean PvX Partners. The funds will be directed toward acquiring new users, launching products, and expanding into international markets.

The deal involves user acquisition financing, with repayment coming from the revenue generated by those users. This is not a traditional venture capital round: the company can raise capital without giving up equity to investors.

Paidax

Kazakhstan-based investment platform Paidax has raised $1 million. The round included participation from DOMiNO Ventures, Philip Capital, White Hill Capital, and Aloqa Ventures.

The platform provides access to global stocks and exchange-traded funds (ETFs). It also offers educational materials, tools for learning investment strategies, and social investing features that allow users to follow other investors.

Higgsfield

Kazakh unicorn Higgsfield has received funding from NVIDIA and the investment fund TCV. The amount was not disclosed. The deal became known during NVIDIA co-founder Jensen Huang’s first visit to Kazakhstan. The funds will be used to develop global infrastructure and expand the team.

Network School

Network School, a tech education project headquartered in Kazakhstan, announced the closing of an investment round at a $2 billion valuation. Participants include Polychain Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and Coinbase. The size of the round was not disclosed.

The project combines education, a professional community, and opportunities for building companies and securing employment in the international market. In July 2026, Network School signed a memorandum to relocate its headquarters to Astana.

Jooba

Startup Jooba, founded by Mark Benliyan of Armenian descent, raised $4 million in a pre-seed round. The round included participation from a16z speedrun — Andreessen Horowitz’s program for early-stage startups — Scribble Ventures, Genius Ventures, and business angels.

Jooba helps fast-growing startups hire employees. For each job opening, the service creates an AI agent that searches for candidates among millions of profiles, while team specialists manually review the shortlist. Clients pay a fixed subscription fee instead of a commission per hired employee. Previously, Mark Benliyan worked at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Netflix, Tinder, and Figma.

Bitimchi AI

Uzbek startup Bitimchi AI secured preliminary investment commitments totaling $105,000 at the Startup Garage Grand Demo Day. Participants in the deal include SQB Ventures, Imkon Ventures, UC Ventures, and CS Angels.

The stated amount represents soft commitments — preliminary investor pledges — rather than confirmation that all capital has already been transferred to the startup.

FinSight

Uzbek startup FinSight received preliminary investment commitments of $60,000 from Imkon Ventures, AloqaVentures, and UC Ventures. Each investor expressed readiness to contribute $20,000.

FinSight automates financial accounting for small and medium-sized businesses. The platform generates profit and loss statements, balance sheets, and cash flow statements based on transactions, and also helps predict risks.

HRHub

Uzbek HRTech platform HRHub received a preliminary investment commitment of $20,000 from Imkon Ventures.

The service helps companies manage HR processes within a single system. Features include employee recruitment, time tracking, payroll calculation, document and leave management, and analytics.

All four Startup Garage deals were announced following the final event of the program’s third season on October 8. In total, startups secured preliminary investment commitments totaling $235,000.

Riasm

20-year-old Askar Uvaliev from Astana raised $3 million in a Pre-Seed round for AI startup Riasm. Investors include Paradigm and SV Angel funds, AI researcher Fei-Fei Li, and Eurasian Hub founder Nurdaulet Bazylbekov.

Riasm trains models that verify scientific knowledge and identify errors and unjustified assumptions within them.

Bigmart

Uzbek B2B marketplace Bigmart closed a Pre-Seed round at $500,000. Participants included United Ventures, IT Park Ventures, Imkon Ventures, and Aloqa Ventures.

The platform allows companies to purchase goods from multiple suppliers in one place — under a single contract, with one payment and one set of documents. The catalog includes over 40,000 products, and clients include Akfa, Wildberries, and Kapitalbank. Funds will be directed toward expanding the sales department, partnering with banks, and developing AI features.

Winners of Astana Hub Battle

At the final of Astana Hub Battle at AI & Digital Bridge 2026, four startups received $25,000 each: CYBERPACK.AI, NCSpeech, Astana Dynamics, and Aman. Fifty startups from Central Eurasia competed for the $100,000 prize fund.

Aman also received a $200,000 grant from MA7 Ventures. Pulsar AI received cloud resources from Yandex Kazakhstan, and M3TRIQ received $25,000 worth of GPU resources from Kazakhtelecom.