At the Kyrgyz Venture Summit held on March 25, Murat Abdrakhmanov and Yelzhan Kushekbayev, founders of MA7 Ventures described as among the most active venture investors in Central Eurasia delivered a keynote that cut through the noise around artificial intelligence with concrete numbers, portfolio-level evidence, and a frank assessment of where the global startup opportunity actually sits right now.
The session, which has since been distilled into a widely circulated set of insights by Accelerate Prosperity, opened with a striking observation about the concentration of capital in the current artificial intelligence cycle. Between 60 and 70 percent of all global venture capital is now flowing into artificial intelligence. Of that, 80 percent is being captured by just seven or eight companies OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and xAI among them. For everyone else, the keynote argued, the real game is being played one layer below: in end-user applications built on top of the infrastructure these giants are constructing.
One of the more compelling data points offered was on the economics of artificial intelligence access itself. Three years ago, one million tokens the unit used to measure artificial intelligence queries cost around 30 dollars. That price has since dropped by a factor of 600. The implication, as Abdrakhmanov framed it, is that tokens are becoming as accessible a resource as electricity, and the major players OpenAI, Google, Anthropic are no longer content to simply sell access to artificial intelligence. They are moving directly to the end user, compressing the margin available to intermediary businesses that have built their models on reselling that access.
This dynamic has direct consequences for Software as a Service businesses. The keynote made a pointed case that traditional subscription-based software models are losing customers because an artificial intelligence agent can now accomplish in an hour what a Software as a Service product charges a monthly fee to enable. The conclusion drawn was unambiguous: every service will either become an agent platform or cease to be relevant. This is not a future prediction according to the speakers, it is already happening.
MA7 Ventures used its own portfolio to illustrate the upside available to investors who move early. Higgsfield Artificial Intelligence, described as one of the fastest-growing startups in recent history, launched in March 2024 and reached a four-billion-dollar valuation within a single year growing at approximately 40 percent month over month. MA7 Ventures invested at the very earliest stage, when the company was valued at five million dollars, before it moved to 300 million, then 1.3 billion, and ultimately four billion dollars. The lesson the firm drew from this was straightforward: back startups as early as possible, without waiting for valuations to rise.
The keynote also touched on a case study involving students who sold an application for 300 million dollars despite having no proprietary technology, a reminder that distribution, timing, and execution can matter as much as technical differentiation in the current environment. For founders and investors in Central Asia and broader emerging markets, the session offered a rare, grounded view of how the global artificial intelligence investment cycle is unfolding and where the windows for participation remain open.
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