Kazakh startup Soup raises $2M to train AI on a laptop
What's the deal? SoupDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, a Kazakh AI startup, has raised $2 million at a $10 million valuation. Blockchain firm Bitfury led the round, with backing from Bill TaiDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, Zoom's first investor and an early Canva backer. The company was founded in 2026 by 18-year-old Alpamys Makazhan and Rafik Mamedov.
What's the endgame? Soup offers an open-source tool for post-training and fine-tuning AI models on a standard laptop, instead of expensive cloud servers. It loads a model into video memory layer by layer rather than all at once, keeping the rest in RAM. "Soup makes it possible to train AI on hardware that almost everyone has," Makazhan said.
What's the catch? The method risks "false success" training, where loss drops but calculations go wrong, Makazhan admits. The team built a validation protocol that it says matches conventional training bit by bit for 8-billion and 14-billion parameter models.
Why now? After posting on Hacker NewsDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → in August, Soup trended on GitHub and drew contributions from more than 190 developers. It grew from near zero to 10,000 stars in three months and is now used by engineers at large tech firms and university researchers.
The startup has no revenue yet, a deliberate choice to build technology and community first. Paid company pilots are planned next. The new funds will go toward research and development, expanding the team from 10 to 20 people.
The signal: Soup's $2 million is modest beside Kazakhstan's recent headline AI deals, but it lands as the country's venture scene heats up — investment hit $209 million in 2025, nearly triple the prior year, with AI taking more than half of local funding. Its bet on laptop-scale fine-tuning targets teams priced out of cloud compute; whether that promise travels beyond the local market will decide the round's weight.
Read more: digitalbusiness.kz
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