Illustration: AI
Kazakhstani startup Pulsar.ai has built an AI scanner for a car’s underbody. In a few seconds, the system finds rust, leaks and hidden damage that a routine inspection can easily miss. According to the company, Pulsar.ai signed its first presale in October: 200,000 reports for $85,000 to a major player in the market. It is now preparing a commercial launch across the Aport network and working on its entry into China. raem.kz spoke with Pulsar.ai co-founder and CEO Baglan Olzhabayev about the product, the pilots and the plans.
What Pulsar.ai does
Pulsar.ai’s scanner, SmartRail, photographs the underside of a car, and AI analyzes the images and produces a report on the vehicle’s condition: the AI Inspection Report. The system flags rust, leaks and hidden damage.
At AI & Digital Bridge 2026, the team showed how it works in two scenarios: car sales at dealerships and road infrastructure.
Who needs it
The first area is toll roads. The company’s main project is a pilot with KazAvtoZhol on the Almaty–Konaev highway. After the pilot, the team plans to scale the solution to other toll roads in Kazakhstan. According to Baglan Olzhabayev, the pilot is currently at the stage of working out how to launch: the parties are agreeing on technical and organizational issues.
The second area is car retail. Pulsar.ai is looking for clients among car dealers, used-car platforms, service networks and fleet owners: for them, an underbody report is a quick, objective way to assess a vehicle’s condition.
First sales and the Aport launch
According to the company, its first pilot in April at Hyundai Premium Almaty produced 150,000 unique images in 14 days at zero data cost, and its first presale, 200,000 reports for $85,000, took place in October 2026.
The next step is a commercial launch of SmartRail at Aport network sites. According to the CEO, the team is preparing the technical and organizational processes to move from the current stage to large-scale rollout.
The hardest part is client trust
Baglan Olzhabayev says the main difficulty is not the technology itself but getting real clients to believe in it. In the automotive world, it isn’t enough to show that AI works: you have to prove its value in real conditions and build the solution into the partner’s processes.
That is why the team went through pilots: it tested the hardware, gathered feedback and refined the product together with clients, moving from an idea to working installations and agreements on new pilots. “Trust is built on results,” says Baglan Olzhabayev.
The Pulsar.ai team
The company was founded in 2026 by two people.
Baglan Olzhabayev is co-founder and CEO of Pulsar.ai. Until recently he was CPO, in charge of product, technology and rollout. Baglan completed Draper University in 2023 and the Google for Startups and MOST accelerators, and previously worked on BEEP, a project for the US car market.
Zhanara Galymzhan is the company’s co-founder. She has experience in banking innovation, fintech, marketing and entrepreneurship support; in 2026 she completed the Draper University program in the US. Until recently Zhanara was CEO of Pulsar.ai. Baglan has now taken that post, and she will focus on marketing.
Pulsar.ai was a finalist at Astana Hub Battle and, according to the company, received a grant of 10 million tenge in cloud resources from Yandex.
Investment and the move into China
The company has no outside investment yet: the team is growing on its own funds. According to the CEO, there is no urgent need to raise money now. The focus is on the product, current projects, commercial launches and expanding the client base. News about a funding round and new clients may come soon.
An important step for the company was its selection for a Chinese accelerator, the Industrial AI & Smart Industry Acceleration Program, backed by Khan Tengri Innovation Hub. In the program, Pulsar.ai is working on a strategy for entering the Chinese market and studying the local industrial ecosystem and potential partners. Longer-term plans include the US market.
The company’s current website is pulsar-ai.co.
