Freedom Holding Corp., the Kazakh-rooted financial group listed on Nasdaq, is positioning itself at the center of Kazakhstan’s push to build “sovereign AI” infrastructure, deepening its ties with OpenAI and the Kazakh government even as past U.S. regulatory scrutiny continues to shadow the firm.
This month the company announced a three-way strategic agreement with the government of Kazakhstan and OpenAI to give 165,000 teachers nationwide access to ChatGPT Edu, and separately unveiled plans to finance and operate a $2 billion “Sovereign AI Hub” powered by NVIDIA hardware in Kazakhstan. The moves, alongside the publication of Freedom’s 2025 Sustainability Report highlighting environmental, social and governance (ESG) initiatives, mark a further shift from its origins as a regional retail broker into a broader role as state-aligned digital and AI infrastructure partner.
National-Scale ChatGPT Deployment
On Nov. 6, the government of Kazakhstan, OpenAI and Freedom Holding signed a strategic agreement in Washington, D.C., under which 165,000 educators across the country will gain access to ChatGPT Edu, an education-focused version of the OpenAI chatbot with enhanced privacy and data-protection controls.
The licenses are expected to be provided annually for three years, covering teachers from primary and secondary schools through universities. Officials in Astana have framed the deal as part of a broader campaign to digitize the education system and upgrade teacher training using AI tools, while OpenAI has presented Kazakhstan as one of the first countries to roll out ChatGPT Edu at national scale.
Freedom’s role is to finance and help structure the deployment — an unusual function for a listed financial group that traditionally focused on brokerage, banking and insurance services.
$2 Billion “Sovereign AI Hub”
In a separate announcement, Freedom said it had signed an agreement with Kazakhstan’s newly created Ministry of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development to develop a $2 billion Sovereign AI Hub in the country, operated by the company and built on NVIDIA’s advanced AI computing stack.
The hub is planned at a site with about 100 MW of available power and is intended to host large-scale AI models and data services for government agencies, financial institutions and private companies in Kazakhstan and the wider Central Asian region. The ministry has pledged to provide regulatory and infrastructure support and to integrate the project into national AI talent-development programmes.
Kazakh officials increasingly frame such projects under the banner of “sovereign AI,” a concept used by several governments to describe domestic control over critical data and computing capacity. At the Digital Bridge 2025 tech forum in Astana in October, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev called AI and digital systems “crucial for national sovereignty” and set a target of transforming Kazakhstan into a “fully digital nation” within three years.
Freedom is already developing data-center infrastructure through its “Freedom Cloud” project, intended as a transit link between European and Chinese networks. The planned AI hub would add a dedicated layer of high-performance computing focused on machine-learning workloads.
ESG Narrative in the 2025 Sustainability Report
The AI announcements arrive shortly after Freedom published its 2025 Sustainability Report, which it describes as the third annual review of its ESG initiatives across the 21 countries where it operates.
According to the report, the group allocated nearly 28 billion tenge (about $57 million) in external ESG-oriented investments during the 2025 financial year, with projects spanning education, technology, sports, culture and environmental protection.
Education- and technology-related spending included financing a new AI facility at SDU University in Kazakhstan and supporting fintech and data-science training programmes such as the Freedom Fintech Bootcamp. Environmental projects ranged from constructing Kazakhstan’s pavilion at COP29 and backing biodiversity efforts, including restoration of the Turan tiger population, to initiatives on plastic and aluminium recycling.
Freedom also emphasized social projects such as chess and youth football leagues, flood-relief spending in western Kazakhstan, and construction of sports facilities, alongside data on employee demographics, including a predominantly Kazakhstan-based workforce and gender balance indicators.
The report arrives as ESG disclosure and governance practices remain a focus for investors and rating agencies following earlier questions about the company’s risk controls.
Legacy of U.S. Scrutiny
Freedom’s transformation into a high-profile AI and infrastructure partner comes two years after a short-seller report in 2023 alleged sanctions evasion, fabricated revenue and commingling of client funds, along with signs of market manipulation in the company’s stock and investments.
Subsequent media reports said U.S. regulators were seeking information about Freedom’s activities, including compliance issues, insider stock sales and links to sanctioned individuals.
Freedom has consistently rejected the allegations. In January 2024 it disclosed the completion of an external review led by a major law firm and forensic accounting specialists, stating that the review had not found evidence to substantiate the core claims. The company has also highlighted improved ratings and outlooks from S&P Global for some of its subsidiaries, while acknowledging in regulatory filings that entities in Kazakhstan have been subject to various regulatory penalties and fines.
Several U.S. law firms have meanwhile announced investigations or potential class actions on behalf of Freedom investors, reflecting continuing legal uncertainty despite the external review.
Markets and Investors
Freedom provides brokerage, banking, insurance and investment services, with a strong footprint in Kazakhstan alongside operations in the United States and Europe. Its shares trade on Nasdaq as well as on the Kazakhstan Stock Exchange and Astana International Exchange under the ticker FRHC.
FRHC last closed at $131.90 on Nasdaq on Nov. 28, 2025, and has gained roughly 12–13% over the past year, according to market data providers.
In 2025 the stock was added to the Russell 3000 Index, and institutional interest has increased, with BlackRock becoming the second-largest shareholder earlier this year. The company reported revenue of about $2.1 billion for its 2025 fiscal year and continues to present itself as a combined financial and technology group, integrating services through its “super app” and domestic digital ecosystem in Kazakhstan.
C5+1 Diplomacy and “State-Aligned” AI Finance
The ChatGPT Edu agreement was signed in Washington shortly after a C5+1 summit that brought together leaders of the five Central Asian states and the United States, where technology partnerships and digital infrastructure featured prominently on the agenda.
Kazakhstan has used such platforms, as well as its annual Digital Bridge forum, to promote itself as a regional digital and AI hub, unveiling initiatives such as the alem.ai innovation center and new AI-oriented public institutions, including the Ministry of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development.
Freedom’s role in financing and operating core infrastructure — from cloud data centers to the planned Sovereign AI Hub — places a privately controlled, Nasdaq-listed financial group at the intersection of Kazakhstan’s state AI strategy and its international capital-markets presence.
Analysts note that this combination raises questions about how AI infrastructure closely integrated with national strategies — and partly marketed through U.S. and European financial channels — will be supervised. Key topics include data-governance arrangements for education and public-sector workloads, the potential application of AI in credit scoring and trading, and the interaction between Kazakh and U.S. regulators as Freedom expands its AI-related activities.
For Kazakhstan, the partnership with OpenAI and the Sovereign AI Hub project help signal technological ambition and deepen ties with U.S. companies within the C5+1 framework. For Freedom, the initiatives reinforce its ambition to evolve from a retail broker into a regional digital-finance and AI infrastructure player, while operating under heightened regulatory and investor scrutiny.
Whether that model ultimately turns Kazakhstan into a testbed for “state-aligned” AI finance will depend on how the projects are implemented, the robustness of oversight in both jurisdictions, and how markets weigh growth opportunities against governance and compliance risks in the years ahead.