Kazakhstan's first AI university to enrol students in 2026-2027 as AI education expands to schools

Kazakhstan's first artificial intelligence university, QAIRU, plans to enrol 600 students and trainees in the 2026-2027 academic year, including 400 bachelor's students (308 on state grants) and 100 master's students, plus 100 Samruk-Kazyna employees in an MBA AI+X programme. Located at the former EXPO 2017 site in Astana, the university offers a three-year English-taught bachelor's programme using an AI+X model combining AI with healthcare and energy. The government is also expanding AI education into schools, starting September 1 with a pilot in 10 small rural schools in Pavlodar and Kyzylorda, expanding to 50 in November and another 300 in January 2027.

This is a national-level arrangement that puts AI talent development into concrete enrolment quotas, course language, pilot school numbers and teacher training scale, offering verifiable reference value for those tracking AI talent supply, the conditions for AI adoption in education systems, and the school market for education products. Two direct effects: university AI and AI+X programmes create a defined enrolment scale that may change the pace of regional AI engineering talent supply; the phased rural school pilot provides a real deployment setting for education AI tools. The limitation is that the original text provides no pilot outcomes, learning results or follow-up evaluation data, and the plan to reach 500 schools remains an official statement. University AI and AI+X programmes create a defined enrolment scale that may change the pace of regional AI engineering talent supply. The phased rural school pilot provides a real deployment setting for education AI tools, involving curriculum and equipment assessments.