“We’ve been organizing Pizza Pitch since 2018, and many of today’s successful startups made their first public debut here. At Astana Hub, startups have access to educational, incubation, and acceleration programs such as Silkway Accelerator, Startup Garage, and AI’preneurs, as well as international initiatives like Hero Training with Draper University in Silicon Valley. We also collaborate with international tech parks and hubs to help Kazakhstani teams scale confidently and enter global markets. These are real opportunities available to entrepreneurs right from the start of their journey,” said Tanat Uskembayev, Managing Director of Astana Hub.

The winner of Pizza Pitch 2025 was Hearo, an innovative application that connects people with hearing impairments around the world and helps them overcome language barriers. Project founder Amina Usina believes the technology has the potential to build a truly inclusive digital space where everyone can be heard.

“Hearo was born out of a desire to break down communication barriers for people with hearing impairments. We realized how inaccessible International Sign Language remains and set out to create a web app that makes learning it easy, intuitive, and interactive — powered by AI that recognizes gestures in real time. Winning Pizza Pitch 2025 is a strong validation that we’re on the right path. We have ambitious goals: from expanding our gesture database and improving AI algorithms to launching a certified educational platform. We believe Hearo can unite people worldwide and make sign language accessible to all,” said Amina Usina, CEO of Hearo.

Second place went to Aspan, an educational app that transforms learning into an engaging process through gamification and microlearning. CortexAI, a multimodal AI for cancer diagnostics, took third place.

The final round also featured FoodSave, PlastX, Clario, Sarqyt, Mind Shield, Kvadred, and Uneet — startups offering solutions to pressing social, environmental, and industry-specific challenges, from waste recycling and food loss prevention to healthcare digitization and automation of industrial processes.

All winners received valuable prizes from partners. The event was supported by Real Time Engineering, Fora Soft, SMS BUS, SecureTech Corporation, I-Global Corp, and KYC Company.

Pizza Pitch is an informal startup competition where future unicorns take the stage to test their pitch skills. Each participant has just three minutes to present, after which a buzzer sounds and their project is evaluated by a panel of expert judges.