Home page / News Founder and owner of Astana Group Nurlan Smagulov spoke at the panel session of Kazakhstan Growth Forum 2026 about how he uses artificial intelligence in his work. According to him, ChatGPT helps him solve very specific business problems - from finding contractors to questions that force him to take a fresh look at his own financial model, a digitalbusiness.kz correspondent reports from the scene. Smagulov does not consider AI a replacement for entrepreneurs. For him, this is primarily a tool that helps the company move faster. “We don't overestimate AI. AI is like an assistant who develops our company and helps us get rid of routine. But the person and the entrepreneurial ego, the entrepreneurial thought remain the main ones in our business. That is, we want to remain creators, we do not want to be slaves to AI. We do not do digitalization for the sake of digitalization, or AI for the sake of AI. We do this only consciously, in harmony with human thought and our values,” explained Nurlan Smagulov’s position. At the same time, the businessman believes that it is better for companies not to wait until artificial intelligence finally enters all processes. It’s much easier to start understanding the tool now
and gradually find practical application for it. “I just wanted to appeal to everyone that it’s better to start with yourself, and it’s better to be in the mainstream than when this big wave can simply throw you overboard,” Smagulov warned. Smagulov says that he regularly uses ChatGPT and does not believe that this requires any special skills. “I use ChatGPT. Today they tried to make me start communicating with Claude more... I probably log into ChatGPT 10 times a day, asking the most, perhaps, banal questions. Everyone thinks that there you need to be very smart, but this is not at all necessary,” shared Nurlan Smagulov. The speaker admitted that one of his chat conversations was on the topic of construction. He was looking for a company with which to implement the project. According to Smagulov, at first he considered different options and eventually came to Chinese contractors - on the recommendation of ChatGPT: “We recently came up with a project for the construction of a large office center in Almaty. I still couldn’t understand who I should work with, because due to a number of mental characteristics I can no longer work with local companies. Working with Turks - there are also some peculiarities there
there is I got tired of all this and asked a question on ChatGPT. He says: “Given your experience, given your innovative and visionary ...” - he sang my praises a lot and at the end he says: “Try Chinese companies.” A dialogue began and after a series of clarifying questions, ChatGPT suggested specific options to Nurlan Smagulov - companies that could be contractors. As a result, the entrepreneur invited the Chinese company to a meeting. “And when they came to me, their representative said: “How did you even find us, have you heard about us somewhere?” I say: “ChatGPT suggested you.” This is a real case from my life. That is, I did not have consultants from the Big 4 who would come to teach me. This is simple communication on a mobile phone in the morning,” the businessman shared. Even more interesting, according to Smagulov, are conversations that not only give a ready-made answer, but force you to look at your own decisions differently. In one of these dialogues, we talked about financing and bank lending. Smagulov said that ChatGPT actually posed a question to him: why should the company give more than half of its profits to banks? The AI assistant recommended the company to increase its own
working capital, reducing the share of borrowed funds. He added that he uses a similar approach when traveling: he asks the neural network non-standard questions about the markets he is visiting, the companies that operate there, and then evaluates the answers himself. “This is how I live now: I go to some country, to Poland, where we are now developing a business, to Romania, etc. - and I always ask ChatGPT non-trivial questions,” concluded Nurlan Smagulov. Nurlan Smagulov told how one of the largest business empires in Kazakhstan is being built
