IT Startups: Top Projects in Kazakhstan and Worldwide in 2024
Top startups are valuable “success stories” that inspire people to start their own businesses and showcase the technological progress of each country. In this article, we look at which new-tech projects are worth watching in 2024 in Kazakhstan and abroad.
Contents:
Notable IT Startups in Kazakhstan
EasyTap
EasyTap is an online service, founded in November 2021, that matches stores and restaurants with hourly workers. In May 2022, the company's founders Magzum Tolesh and Temirlan Kabylbekov raised $270K in private investment. The investors include the venture company Activat VC and other major players in this market.
The service helps businesses find frontline staff and tackles the labor shortage. Workers, in turn, get quick side jobs with convenient schedules and weekly pay. The app is already used by more than 150,000 people in cities across Kazakhstan, and it has entered the Kyrgyz market.
ApartX
ApartX is a service that makes it easy to rent out apartments and manage them with smart locks. According to the startup's founders, this will make the rental market more transparent. ApartX's fresh approach to the rental market has caught the attention of property owners and earned positive user reviews. In 2023, the startup team closed another funding round, successfully raising $200K from Big Sky Capital and $50K from Activat VC.
CTOgram
Another interesting startup popular with users is the CTOgram mobile app, which helps car owners find service stations and spare parts directly from suppliers. Last year, more than 250,000 car owners and over 2,000 service centers registered on the platform. Last summer, the company raised a new funding round from investor Timur Turlov: the round totaled $1.5 million, and the startup's valuation reached $13.5 million.
Citix
Citix is a Kazakhstani startup working in Smart City and AdTech. Its product combines smart city technologies with outdoor advertising innovations. The company has already built a network of street gadgets across Kazakhstan and has even entered the markets of Turkey and MENA (the Middle East and North Africa). At the end of 2023, an American business angel invested $1 million in the startup at a valuation of $98 million.
CodiPlay
CodiPlay is a service that teaches schoolchildren in grades 3 through 11 the Scratch, C++ and Python programming languages through mobile games. The startup team has also developed the CodiTeach platform to improve teachers' IT skills. In 2023, the company raised $2 million in investment; it not only operates in Kazakhstan but also plans to expand to South Korea, Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan. In total, its products are used by more than 150,000 people from all over Kazakhstan.
In fact, this list could go on and on: dozens of startups emerge in Kazakhstan every year, each of them unique and successful at raising investment. You can read more about their stories on Kazakhstani media portals, for example Digital Business, in its dedicated section on startups.
Notable IT Startups Worldwide
Here are some IT startups from abroad that will be interesting to follow in 2024.
AI21
AI21, one of OpenAI's strongest competitors, was among the first companies to bring AI to the masses and has attracted the attention of some major industry players, such as Google and Nvidia. The startup, valued at $1 billion and founded by Amnon Shashua, Yoav Shoham and Ori Goshen, recently raised $208 million in its latest funding round, backed by Intel.
Aleph Alpha
Aleph Alpha is another startup that can be seen as Europe's answer to OpenAI. It aims to build what the company calls “trustworthy” AI for businesses and governments. The Heidelberg-based startup, founded in 2019 by Jonas Andrulis, recently raised more than $500 million in a round led by Innovation Park Artificial Intelligence.
Articul8
Articul8, powered by Intel technology, was introduced to the world in early 2024. This independent Intel unit will offer companies a full-stack, vertically optimized generative AI software platform that will use AI for customer data storage, training and inference within the enterprise security perimeter.
D-Matrix
D-Matrix is also definitely one of the AI startups worth keeping an eye on. Recently backed by companies such as Temasek and Microsoft's venture fund M12 in a $110 million funding round, D-Matrix says its chips are optimized to support generative AI systems and compete in the same space as Nvidia.
ElevenLabs
Founded in 2022, the startup ElevenLabs says it has already become a unicorn. This was made possible by an $80 million investment round in January led by Andreessen Horowitz, former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman and entrepreneur Daniel Gross. ElevenLabs helps users, including employees of Fortune 500 companies, create and design AI voices in different languages and with different accents.
Mistral
Another European contender for OpenAI's and Google's share of the AI market is the Paris-based company Mistral, which reached unicorn status after a €385 million funding round in December from Andreessen Horowitz, Nvidia and Salesforce. Founded by former researchers from Google, DeepMind and Meta, Mistral focuses on building open-source large language models.
Binalyze
Estonian cybersecurity startup Binalyze wants to cut the time it takes companies to respond to incidents. Tallinn-based Binalyze specializes in digital forensics and incident response (DFIR) and considers Turkish Airlines, Deloitte and EY its potential clients. The company recently raised $19 million in an investment round led by Molten Ventures.
Bolt
Bolt, well known in the mobility market for its innovative approach to electric vehicle safety, is another startup to watch in 2024. Bolt first launched in Ireland in December 2020 with its ride-hailing product to compete with the existing FreeNow and Uber apps. Last March, the company shared plans to bring more e-bikes into its regional schemes in anticipation of growing demand.
Build A Rocket Boy
Build A Rocket Boy is a Scottish video game company founded by former Grand Theft Auto developer Leslie Benzies. It plans to launch its own open-world platform and a video game series called MindsEye. To that end, Build A Rocket Boy raised $110 million in January alone in a Series D round led by US-based RedBird Capital Partners.
Databricks
Databricks is perhaps the only startup on this list that has also invested in other startups, and it definitely deserves attention this year. The San Francisco-based company develops AI software for building, testing and deploying machine learning and analytics applications. It recently raised more than $500 million.
