Where does Network School
land in Kazakhstan?
On 21 July 2026 the Iskandar Puteri City Council revoked the business licence of NSO Malaysia Sdn Bhd, the operator of Network School, and ordered its Forest City premises to cease operating from 22 July, citing licensing and premises-use breaches. MDEC moved to revoke the company's Malaysia Digital status, and the Johor state government backed the decision.
Within hours, Balaji Srinivasan announced a memorandum of understanding between the Republic of Kazakhstan and Network School for a new campus, signed with Minister of Digital Development, Innovation and Aerospace Industry Zhaslan Madiyev. The stated terms: expedited visas, streamlined redomiciliation, and active recruitment of talent. The country is decided. The site is not.
Forest City did not fail at the country level. Malaysia welcomed NS. It failed at the facility level: a premises-use licence on two adjoining units, where the activity did not match the permitted use. That is why the gates below are checked at every level. Passing at country level tells you nothing about the building.
Country, region, state, facility.
NS scouts in this order. Each level has its own gate, and the level that killed Forest City was the last one.
Kazakhstan clears both. Sourced.
MOU between the Republic of Kazakhstan and Network School, signed with a named minister (Zhaslan Madiyev, Digital Development, Innovation and Aerospace Industry). Written and named, which is the standard the rubric requires.
Cointelegraph, Kazakhstan deal →Two live instruments: the Neo Nomad visa (B12-1), one year renewable three times for remote workers earning $3,000+/month for a foreign employer; and Digital Nomad Residency (B9-1) for IT professionals with no income floor and a path to 10-year residence.
Fragomen, Kazakhstan digital nomad visa →5 candidates, scored.
Each scored 0-5 on nine weighted axes, normalized to 100, then gate-capped. Expand any site for the axis-by-axis breakdown with sources.
Astana (AIFC)
The capital, seat of the sponsoring ministry, and home of the Astana International Financial Centre: English common law, an independent court, and its own financial regulator. It is the single thing NS most lacks right now, codified legal recognition rather than goodwill. Harsh continental winters are the tradeoff.
Axis breakdown + sources
Alatau City
A new technology city beside Almaty with its own special legal regime, Parliament adopted a 'territory of accelerated development' status, and the SEZ was expanded to roughly 99,000 hectares in late 2025. Its master plan includes a Business Park for IT and a 'Golden District' for education and science. Active territorial development begins 2026, which is both the opportunity and the risk: it is the v4 clone-stamp canvas, but the trunk utilities are still going in.
Axis breakdown + sources
Almaty (city proper)
The cultural and tech capital: the deepest talent pool, universities, a real startup scene, mountains for the outdoor 'burn', and a milder climate than the north. The catch is structural, redomiciliation runs through AIFC in Astana, and the city proper offers no site-specific legal regime. Best place to live, weakest place to incorporate.
Axis breakdown + sources
Aktau
Caspian port, a special economic zone, energy-adjacent and warmer than the interior. Cheap power for compute and mining plus an aerospace/frontier edge, the sponsoring ministry literally covers aerospace. A distinct atoms-and-energy lane, but a thin talent base and a remote, industrial feel.
Axis breakdown + sources
Karaganda (greenfield)
Low cost and greenfield land: the cleanest canvas to test the prefab, open-source clone-stamp campus with no legacy constraints. Thin infrastructure and a small talent base make it a lab, not a flagship.
Axis breakdown + sources
Astana (AIFC) leads because it answers the exact failure mode: the AIFC gives a codified English-common-law wrapper, an independent court, and a real redomiciliation path, next to the ministry that signed the MOU. Alatau City is the close second and the more interesting bet: a purpose-built tech city that already has its own special legal regime, sitting next to the deepest talent pool in the country.
The honest recommendation is not either/or. Incorporate in Astana under AIFC, put the campus in the Almaty region. Legal wrapper where the law is; people where the people want to be. That split is exactly what Forest City lacked.
The level that actually bites.
Four facility options in the Almaty area, each with the specific thing to verify in writing before signing. This is where Forest City was lost.
Alatau City, Business Park / IT district
SEZ greenfield, purpose-builtInside the special legal regime, zoned for IT and business, with an education and science district in the master plan. The only Almaty-area option where the campus and the legal wrapper are the same jurisdiction.
VERIFY: Trunk utilities only launching in 2026. Confirm power, water and fiber delivery dates in writing before committing a cohort.
Alatau City →Alatau Innovation Technology Park SEZ
Existing SEZ, operatingAn operating SEZ the Prime Minister has personally inspected for high-tech manufacturing. Real, occupied infrastructure rather than a rendering.
VERIFY: Zoned around manufacturing. Confirm that a residential-plus-coworking campus is a permitted use, this is exactly the mismatch that revoked Forest City.
PM of Kazakhstan, Alatau ITP SEZ inspection →Almaty central business district
Existing commercial towersFastest possible occupancy: fit-out and move in. Maximum amenity, maximum talent proximity, zero construction risk.
VERIFY: No special legal regime, and mixing office with residential/coworking use in a commercial tower is the Forest City failure mode. Verify permitted use per unit, in writing, per floor.
Medeu / Shymbulak mountain corridor
Resort and retreat propertyThe strongest 'burn' setting in Kazakhstan: altitude, trails, ski access, a genuinely distinctive campus identity.
VERIFY: Seasonal access, limited capacity, and resort zoning that rarely permits long-stay residential-plus-work use.
The rubric, live.
Rate a candidate 0-5 on each axis, or load a site and adjust. Untick a hard gate to watch the score get capped.
Weights come from the Malaysia post-mortem: government partnership (3.0x) and immigration (2.5x) outrank cost and lifestyle. The three gates above are not scores. Untick one and the result is capped regardless of everything else, because a licence granted is a licence that can be revoked. Decision support, not an oracle.
- Government partnership is a hard gate, not a score. A site with no written, named commitment is capped below the top tier no matter how cheap or pleasant it is.
- Immigration is a hard gate. Model visa status for the actual member-nationality mix, not the average case.
- Verify permitted use at the facility level, in writing, per unit. Malaysia was fine. Johor was fine. A premises-use licence on two adjoining units is what actually closed the campus.
- Keep 'earned recognition' and 'political goodwill' distinct. Goodwill from a ministry can reverse; codified law is stickier.
- Every non-obvious number is either sourced or explicitly labeled an editorial estimate. Do not launder estimates into facts when this reaches decision-makers.
The form is the rubric.
NS runs a public second-site search with a finder's fee at ns.com/search. What the form asks is what NS weighs. Distilled below, grouped by their own hierarchy.
Multiple submissions allowed; judged spam earns nothing.
- Socials plus at least two links, biggest business run or exited
- Could you operate or invest in this node yourself?
- Are you native to the country you are proposing?
- Every available digital-nomad visa: name, length in months, income floor, renewability
- Have you personally applied and gotten one? Exact dates, how long, screenshots
- The top three champions of tech in the country, with links
- Can you introduce us to any of them?
- Closest major city and closest international airport, by code
- Air quality index
- Exact address with a maps link, ownership type, your relationship to it
- Property type, year built, building m², lot m², unit count, bed count, average unit size
- Zoning: what the property can LEGALLY be used for
- Inside a special economic zone?
- Gym? Move-in ready? Rent, sale, or both? Room for expansion nearby?
- Facilities within a 30 minute drive: grocery, hospital, restaurants, transit, beach, sports, school
- At least 5 photos, a video walkthrough, wifi speed in Mbps
- 01Visas are interrogated hardest: program name, months, income floor, renewability, and proof you personally got one. That confirms immigration as a top-weight axis, and it demands receipts, not vibes.
- 02Three named tech champions with warm-intro paths: the government-partnership axis starts as a people problem. A signature begins with someone who can walk you into the room.
- 03Zoning is asked as 'what can this property LEGALLY be used for'. That is the exact question Forest City failed. The form learned the same lesson the rubric did.
- 04Beds, units, move-in readiness, expansion room: speed to 1,024 residents is a first-class criterion. A gorgeous site that needs two years of construction loses to a move-in-ready one.
- 05Air quality index is a named field. Our rubric folded it into livability; NS asks for the number itself.
- 06The bounty shape ($100 to $100,000) says NS expects thousands of submissions and needs exactly one to be right. Precision beats volume; a judged-spam submission earns zero.
- ▢Zoning: the permitted use covers residence plus coworking plus education, per unit, in writing
- ▢Special economic zone status of the parcel itself, not the district around it
- ▢Move-in readiness: occupancy possible without construction, or a dated, penalized delivery schedule
- ▢Capacity: units and beds against the 1,024-resident target, with the expansion parcel identified
- ▢The burn: gym on site, and outdoor training viable in the local climate most of the year
- ▢Thirty-minute circle: grocery, hospital, restaurants, transit, and ideally a beach or mountains
- ▢Wifi speed measured on site in Mbps, plus the airport code and drive time
- ▢Air quality index for the site, not the country average
- Balaji, Kazakhstan MOU announcement (X)
- Cointelegraph, Kazakhstan deal + Malaysia revocation
- The Star, Johor revokes Network School's business licences
- Malay Mail, MDEC to revoke NSO Malaysia's Digital status
- Fragomen, Kazakhstan digital nomad visa introduced
- Novastan, Alatau gains special status
- Alatau City, official
- Invest in Almaty, SEZ and industrial zones
- Balaji, Network School node framework (v1-v5)
Axis scores are editorial estimates by Interneta from public sources, not an official Network School ranking. Every non-obvious claim carries a source; values without one are labeled editorial estimates in the breakdown.