In an office at the Astana Hub technology park, Rashid Ismailov, the technical director of Cybernet AI, is staring at the flickering data stream on the screen. Just a few days ago, his team completed a seemingly impossible task - they gave up the shortcut of "patching up" on English models and chose a more difficult but disruptive path: starting from scratch, building an AI brain that truly "understands" local people's speech for the Turkic speaking world. In January 2026, this achievement, named the "World's Largest Turkic ASR Model," was officially launched. It not only broke the monopoly of international giants in the field of speech AI, but also gave Kazakhstan its own coordinates on the global map of artificial intelligence.

From repairing to starting from scratch

For a long time, businesses and people in Central Asia have faced an awkward dilemma when using voice AI services: international mainstream models centered around English not only fail to accurately recognize the complex speech characteristics of Turkic languages, but also struggle to cope with the widespread "Turkic Russian" mixed oral scenarios in the region. This has led to bank customer service not being able to understand dialects, and government hotlines being unable to handle mixed instructions, seriously restricting the popularization of digital services.

Faced with this pain point, Cybernet AI has chosen to start anew. According to the technical director Rashid Ismailov, the team consciously abandoned the conventional approach of fine-tuning the English model and instead created a new model that fully integrates contemporary language patterns. The model is based on Kazakh, Turkish, Uzbek and other Turkic languages, and shows high accuracy in mixed spoken language recognition widely existing in business and public service scenarios, realizing fundamental technological innovation.

National Strategy and Legislative Guarantee

This achievement is not accidental, it is the result of Kazakhstan's vigorous development of the digital economy strategy. The project has received strategic support from Astana Hub Technology Park (the largest international technology park in Central Asia) and the Ministry of Digital Development and Artificial Intelligence of Kazakhstan, and has been developed using advanced GPU infrastructure.

It is worth noting that Kazakhstan has previously officially enacted legislation related to artificial intelligence, providing clear and stable institutional guarantees for the standardized development of this field. Tanat Uskembayev, Executive Director of Astana Hub, stated that this achievement signifies Kazakhstan's transition from a mere user of global AI solutions to an internationally competitive technology exporter.

Empowering thousands of industries and businesses

This new model is mainly aimed at industries that handle massive voice interactions, and has broad market application prospects. It can maintain stable performance in noisy environments, multiple accents, and real-time language switching scenarios, significantly reducing the cost of customer service channels for enterprises and achieving 24/7 high-precision voice services.

Financial institutions: Banks and fintech companies can provide more accurate voice customer service and risk control.

Service industry: telecommunications operators, large call centers, logistics companies, improving communication efficiency.

Government department: A government platform that provides public services, making government services more accessible to the public.

Cybernet AI has already conducted business in Kazakhstan, the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union, which fully demonstrates the internationalization potential of local technology companies in Kazakhstan. For Chinese companies seeking overseas expansion, especially those looking to expand into the Central Asian market, Kazakhstan is not only a resource center, but also a vibrant innovation center.Editor/Yang Meiling