yerkezhan toleukhan
- research intern at stanford: 3d genome organization, chromatin dynamics and gene regulation
- undergraduate research at uc berkeley: mechanisms of chromosome dynamics and reorganization during meiosis
Welcome to Kazakhstan.
Talent Lab prepared the best talent to make Network School in Kazakhstan special, focused on research and startups, merging them for the best.
researchers
1 of 9, yerkezhan toleukhan
founders
mark inger
- founder and ceo, pleep: multimodal ai sales agent, text and voice across whatsapp, telegram, instagram and phone
- raised $100,000 pre-seed at 17, youngest venture-backed founder in kazakhstan
- 100+ paying b2b customers, 10x revenue growth in a year, largest telecom in the cis as anchor client
- dropped out of duke; y combinator founder dinner in bangalore, 50 founders
1 of 6, mark inger
mentors
Talent Lab mentors, who will mentor the researchers and founders.
Gulnur Kalimuldina
- CEO of Mirai Tech, deeptech founder, PhD
- [TODO: logos missing]
1 of 7, Gulnur Kalimuldina
infrastructure
A block of the EXPO complex, the petal around the Nur-Alem sphere, given over to laboratories.
- floor 1
- math, physics and robotics: everything around math foundation, for strong mathematicians
- floor 2
- life science: med, brain, longevity
- floor 3
- climate and agri: everything applied to nature
- floor 4
- research-preneur: an Astana Hub programme purely for researchers, labs only
community
best schools
university partnership
the EXPO laboratory block
A block of the EXPO complex, the petal around the Nur-Alem sphere, given over to laboratories. Four floors: math, physics and robotics; life science; climate and agri; and the research-preneur floor, an Astana Hub programme purely for researchers.
- [TODO: photograph of the NU laboratories]
nazarbayev university
The university's laboratories, open to the lab's researchers.
- [TODO: photograph of QAIRU]
qairu
In negotiation, not a signed partnership.
best accelerators in the country
1 of 5, ai'preneurs
compute
- $10bn
- package of agreements between the government, Firebird and NVIDIA, signed 15 June 2026
- 100,000
- latest-generation GPUs, NVIDIA GB300 and Vera Rubin, at Ekibastuz in Pavlodar region
- 125MW
- first-phase facility, commercial launch in 2027, inside a $5bn first phase
on this site
The package includes Firebird Labs Kazakhstan at Alem.ai, which is the same site as the Talent Lab.
Local capacity 300MW with room to 1GW, and a government estimate of at least $3bn a year in export revenue.
zero tax at astana hub
- corporate income tax
20%0%- vat
12%0%- personal income tax on salaries
10%0%- social tax, non-resident staff
9.5%0%
The exemptions run until 1 January 2029.
- Conditional on at least 90% of revenue coming from priority ICT activities; drifting off that profile costs the status and the rates with it.
- The rates hold across the whole country, not only inside the park, which is what separates Astana Hub from an ordinary special economic zone.
- Dividends are taxed at 5% for the first three years, then zero.
- Registration is free and online: five working days of moderation, then ten with the commission. No physical presence in Kazakhstan is required to register.
digital nomad visas
Both categories opened in 2025. Astana Hub took 270+ applications from 20+ countries in the first two months.
Values of Talent Lab + Network School
- selection over scale
- both filter hard, neither chases headcount
- proximity is the product
- people in one place, not in one chat
- exit the default path
- both are built as an alternative to the standard track, university then corporation
- talent is the scarce input
- not capital, not infrastructure, people
endowment fund
The endowment fund team
Aldiyar Sarsembayev[TODO: role] 
Damir Iskakov[TODO: role] 
Alim Dualetbek[TODO: role] 
Dias Sarmurzayev[TODO: role] 
Assiya Bralina[TODO: role]