Asqar’s Notes

You are welcome yall 🙌

I invited Razmig —> Razmig invited Nico (VP of Nvidia) —> Kazakh gov met Nico and got introduced to Jensen —> Jensen came to Kazakhstan

In the long term, the goal shouldn't just be selling uranium. Small modular reactors are coming, and every one of them will need fuel and people to run it for decades. Kazakhstan can start by supplying both to our region - then learn to build the stations ourselves. Imagine Kazakhstan that, in 30 years, exports entire modular nuclear stations instead of uranium powder. That's a country that powers half of Asia, and it starts with kids choosing nuclear engineering today.

The smartest kids in Kazakhstan should not be doing AI or maxxing out Claude. AI products don't need government support. It's not hard to figure out how to write instructions. There is literally no point of all these "AI education" courses. Where the state matters is infrastructure, and the real bottleneck there is the energy sector. And we have a solution that is clean and sustainable - nuclear energy. Kazakhstan is the world's largest producer and exporter of natural uranium, accounting for 40% (!) of global production. Yet we are not in the field at all - not a single stand on Digital Bridge. We're about to build our first nuclear stations, but they'll be designed and built by foreign partners. We should use our uranium as leverage to change that: make more of our own fuel, demand Kazakh engineers and suppliers in every contract, and make sure the people running these stations in 20 years are ours. I see no peers of mine doing nuclear engineering or physics. So please, convince the smart young kids to pursue nuclear engineering or physics.

What would actually settle the NIS debate is comparing kids just above and just below the admission cutoff on later outcomes like university, earnings, and whether they stayed in Kazakhstan. Is someone going to do this as a data science research project, please send me your kaspi - I am willing to donate

How it’s going: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-15/kazakhstan-firebird-ink-10-billion-ai-deal-with-nvidia-support

How it all started:

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Привет! 👋 Это официальный канал Q App - казахстанской платформы, где школьники могут подать документы в университет онлайн, без очередей и лишней беготни. На канале вас ждут: - Обзоры ведущих университетов Казахстана - Пошаговые инструкции и лайфхаки для поступающих - Актуальная информация для абитуриентов, родителей и педагогов Подписывайся, если впереди поступление 👉 qapps.kz

Time to do my favorite thing in this channel - bragging about Berkeley Today I learned that my Professor is followed by Better Call Saul actor Bob Odenkirk.

Collegeboard’s level of incompetence is just astonishing. How do you manage to get a digital exam leaked. I remember when they first announced SAT becoming digital I thought that the leaks would end. They have enough budget to make different exams for every time zone or come up with some other logistics. It’s honestly hard to judge students for not choosing integrity when the barrier to break it is practically nonexistent. Or when you know that your competition isn’t choosing one. I think that’s a genuine crisis. The average accepted student at NU has like 1500+. The system rewarded an entire batch of students for cheating the system. And I talked to everyone - the students, the admissions office, and the administration. It doesn’t seem like the solution is coming soon. A great looking university statistics is not a flex if the entire thing is bs.

🚀 Hiring: Founding Fullstack Engineer at Oki Oki, formerly Aleem, is a Silicon Valley language-learning startup. You may have heard of us as the app that surpassed Duolingo in App Store rankings in 10 countries before the rebrand. We reached 400,000+ users in the first few months after iOS launch, are backed by an a16z Scout, have one of the biggest VCs in Central Asia on our cap table, and are currently valued at $9M. We’re hiring a strong Middle+ / Senior-leaning Fullstack Engineer to join the founding team. Stack: TypeScript, Next.js App Router, SwiftUI Need: 2+ years commercial experience, strong product thinking, fast execution, high ownership, and comfort with ambiguity. Offer: founding equity, modest cash + bonuses, salary growth as we grow, remote/in-office, possible Silicon Valley relocation later. Send CV, GitHub, and your best project: Telegram: @Alidar01

Apple Pay is coming *met with the CEO of Kaspi - Mikheil Lomtadze

18 летний школьник придумал… Молодой Казахстанец получил грант… The age is irrelevant. I want to celebrate wins from 30-year-olds. I want to learn about a 50-year-old who decided to open their studio or a coffee shop. Or pursue art. And can I also please get other fields in my feed? Medicine? Teaching? Why is dropping out to do music frowned upon but dropping out to do a startup not? If I were good at music (and rock was still popular) I would do that. Fuck all I think about now is how once the current project is solidified and I can get some free time I will return to playing an electric guitar again. Startups are cool, but we will soon all overdose on this shit.

We have 2 incoming summer interns: • Duke CS '28 • UC Berkeley Applied Math '27 The latter is an American-born citizen. Both are coming to Astana. If you want to work with a great team this summer, feel free to apply: https://forms.gle/DMix2ZTmeHMXch637

Happy to announce…

So glad I could play a major role in a collaboration as important as Nvidia, Firebird, and Kazakhstan. This took weeks of preparation and careful strategic planning. It’s a huge privilege to work with the government’s top officials and the Nvidia delegation. I have spent 3 days with Nico, Razmig, and Alex, accompanying them to all of their meetings. There is so much to learn from them and yet they are all extremely down to earth. I would have never guessed even a month ago that I would be sitting in a sauna with an Nvidia VP and get to hear about his personal relationship with Jensen Huang, exchanges with Elon Musk, and that I would be one work matter away from the President of the US. More announcements soon.

In the President’s house Akorda