On September 16, 2025, a delegation from the Republic of Belarus visited the Institute of Smart Systems and Artificial Intelligence (ISSAI) at Nazarbayev University and Ministry of Digital Development, Innovations and Aerospace Industry of the Republic of Kazakhstan, to exchange knowledge and explore opportunities in the field of artificial intelligence. Their primary focus was ISSAI’s work on developing large language models, particularly KazLLM, which has positioned Kazakhstan as a regional leader in this domain.
The Belarusian delegation included representatives of OAO Giprosvyaz and the Belarusian State University of Informatics and Radioelectronics. From ISSAI, the meeting was attended by Executive Director Yerbol Absalyamov, Acting Deputy Director of Product Amina Baikenova, Data Scientist Aspandiyar Nurimanov, Senior External Affairs Manager Aigerim Sarsenova, and GR Manager Alaidar, who gave a presentation on the Institute’s activities. The discussions highlighted the delegation’s strong interest in practical applications of LLMs and their recognition of Kazakhstan’s advanced achievements in digitalization.
The visit was divided into two parts: in the morning, the delegation familiarized themselves with ISSAI’s projects, while in the afternoon they met with the Ministry of Digital Development, Innovations and Aerospace Industry and JSC NITEC to further discuss collaboration opportunities in LLM development, deployment and usage.
The delegation from Belarus was particularly interested in ISSAI’s experience and way in creating KazLLM, launching products, collaboration with Academia society, and how ISSAI shares its know-how and expertise with students and other Kazakhstani universities.
The ministry also shared information about how they coordinated and arranged collaboration between different stakeholders on creating KazLLM, and plans on deployment and implementation of KazLLM. The ministry also discussed utilization of supercomputer cluster.
NITEC shared information about their Data Lake (Smart data ukimet) and its utilization, how they incorporate data from different governmental agencies into one platform, and plans on creating and implementation of LLMs and AI chat-bots into the governmental sector.
As a reminder, in December 2024 ISSAI presented its Kazakh Large Language Model, KazLLM, directly to the President of Kazakhstan, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. Tailored to the country’s multilingual and multicultural context, KazLLM supports Kazakh, Russian, and English, with additional capabilities in Turkish. This project not only created a cutting-edge AI tool but also strengthened national expertise, as Kazakhstani researchers contributed to every stage of development. President Tokayev commended the ISSAI team, noting that KazLLM is one of the central elements of Kazakhstan’s AI strategy.