Presight Showcases Astana Smart City to Kazakhstan's President - A Signal of Abu Dhabi's AI Reach Into Central Asia

Astana | EcoPulse24

Tuesday, April 28, 2026

Presight, the Abu Dhabi-listed applied AI company majority-owned by G42, welcomed His Excellency Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, to the Alem.ai Artificial Intelligence Center on Friday - presenting the Astana Smart City platform in what marks a significant milestone in the company's Central Asia expansion strategy.

📊 Presight - Market Data | April 28, 2026

A Platform That Unifies a City

Developed in partnership with the Astana city administration, Presight's AI platform integrates data from transport, infrastructure, and public safety systems into a single unified operational environment - enabling city authorities to monitor activity in real time, respond more rapidly to incidents, and coordinate services with greater efficiency.

As part of the official visit, Presight also showcased its Command and Control Center and presented the President with the first sovereign data center built specifically to meet Astana's intelligence systems requirements - a facility that places data sovereignty at the centre of Kazakhstan's AI infrastructure strategy.

Three Voices, One Message

Zhaslan Madiyev, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development, framed the initiative as a national priority, describing Astana Smart City as a foundational step toward AI-driven government - one that creates conditions for data-driven decision-making and a new model of governance powered by artificial intelligence.

Zhenis Kassymbek, Mayor of Astana, emphasised the practical dimension, noting that the goal extends beyond digitalization toward building a unified urban management system where all city services operate in coordination, improving efficiency, safety, and quality of life.

Thomas Pramotedham, CEO of Presight, said the company is honoured to have hosted the President, adding that Kazakhstan has taken a clear and deliberate approach to building long-term national AI capability. He described the Astana work as building an integrated foundation that can scale across sectors over time - not deploying individual technologies, but embedding intelligence into core infrastructure.

Kazakhstan as a Strategic Beachhead

Kazakhstan is a key growth market for Presight, with Astana serving as its Central Asia headquarters and a growing local team delivering systems on the ground. The company's approach centres on building unified national intelligence systems where data, analytics, and operational control are connected from the outset - allowing institutions to move from fragmented tools toward coordinated operations embedded within core infrastructure.

GITEX Central Asia - May 4-5, Almaty

Presight will showcase its intelligence systems at GITEX Central Asia on May 4-5, 2026 in Almaty, Kazakhstan, at stand H11-B30 - covering smart city platforms, national data environments, and command and control solutions already operational across the region.

EcoPulse24 Analysis

Friday's visit is not a ceremonial photo opportunity. It is a commercial signal.

When the President of a resource-rich, strategically positioned nation personally visits your AI demonstration centre, it does three things simultaneously: it validates the technology, it accelerates procurement decisions at the ministerial level, and it signals to competing AI vendors that the relationship has depth that cannot be easily replicated.

For Presight - and by extension G42 - Kazakhstan is a template, not a one-off. The playbook is consistent: establish a physical headquarters in a key market, build a local team, secure a flagship government project at national scale, then use that reference to expand across sectors and into adjacent geographies. Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, and other Central Asian markets are watching.

The ADX share price reaction - up 0.64% to AED 3.13 on a day when the news was published - is modest. Markets rarely re-rate on a single press event. What moves the needle is sustained backlog growth and revenue conversion from these relationships over the next four to six quarters.

With a market capitalisation of AED 17.55 billion, Presight is priced as a growth company. The Astana milestone confirms the growth thesis is intact. Whether the valuation is justified will depend on how quickly intelligence systems at national scale translate into recurring revenue - and Kazakhstan may be the clearest early test of that answer.