BARCELONA, November 5, 2026 - The Alatau City Authority has concluded its official participation in the Smart City Expo World Congress 2026 (SCEWC 2026), held from November 3 to 5 at Fira Barcelona Gran Via, Spain. Led by Bayan Konirbayev, Chief Digital & AI Officer of the Alatau City Authority, the delegation presented Alatau City's vision of an AI-native, tokenized-by-default city on one of the industry's main stages, signed four Agreements Memoranda of Understanding (MoUs) with international technology and innovation partners, and held around 20 bilateral meetings with cities, international organizations, global technology companies, and financial advisory firms.
Since 2011, the Smart City Expo World Congress has been the world's largest and most influential event for cities and urban innovation, bringing together leaders from global companies, governments, and strategic organizations. As a long-standing partner of Fira Barcelona, the event's main organizer, the Alatau City Authority used the congress to promote its development vision through official speaking engagements, conduct early-stage promotion of the Alatau City IoT & PPP White Paper, strengthen city-to-city partnerships, and expand its global network of partners.
On November 4, Bayan Konirbayev delivered a keynote address titled "Building a City from Day One: AI Native City, Infrastructure, Digital Economy & Tokenization" at the Impact Tech Stage as part of the theme session "Core Digital Infrastructure." The address set out how Alatau City is building its physical and digital backbone - data centers, IoT sensors, communication networks, and unified data platforms - from the very start of its development, and how this foundation enables urban digital twins, AI-driven city management, and tokenization by default, while supporting infrastructure resilience, sustainable urban growth, and new investment opportunities.
"Alatau City has a rare opportunity to design its digital infrastructure from day one rather than retrofit it later. At SCEWC, we showed how an AI-native approach - built on interoperable data, IoT, and digital twins - can make a new city more resilient, more efficient, and more attractive to investors. The partnerships we launched in Barcelona will help us turn this vision into concrete pilot projects," said Bayan Konirbayev, Chief Digital & AI Officer of the Alatau City Authority.
Later the same day, Konirbayev joined the panel discussion "From Buildings, Communities to Cities: The Journey from Automation to Autonomy," hosted at the joint Dell Technologies, NVIDIA, and Honeywell booth and moderated by Honeywell. The panel examined how digital transformation is evolving from intelligent buildings and connected communities toward autonomous, data-driven cities, and the governance, operating models, and public-private collaboration needed to get there. On November 3, the delegation also took part in KPMG's closed-door executive roundtable "Financing the City of the Future," which brought together city leaders, infrastructure executives, and finance professionals to discuss how urban priorities can be translated into investable infrastructure and private capital mobilized.
Alongside its speaking engagements, the Alatau City Authority signed MoUs with Quectel, Open & Agile Smart Cities & Communities (OASC), and the Malaysian Research Accelerator for Technology and Innovation (MRANTI), and advanced its international cooperation agenda across five core pillars:
IoT Connectivity & Data Interoperability: The MoU with Quectel, a global end-to-end IoT solutions provider, sets the stage for a joint IoT device and connectivity reference architecture and a pilot district covering smart lighting, metering, and environmental monitoring, with data feeding Alatau City's Digital Twin. The MoU with OASC, the Brussels-based international network of cities, focuses on applying Minimal Interoperability Mechanisms (MIMs) to Alatau City's data architecture and procurement. Meetings with Deutsche Telekom, NTT DATA, and ITRON explored IoT connectivity, private 5G Network-as-a-Service models, and smart metering solutions.
Innovation Sandboxes & Start-up Ecosystems: The MoU with MRANTI, the Malaysian government agency under the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, lays the groundwork for mutual recognition of pilots tested in Malaysia's National Technology & Innovation Sandbox (NTIS) and Alatau City's experimental regimes, an innovation corridor for start-ups and investors, and joint technology showcases in Kuala Lumpur and Alatau.
Digital Government, Standards & Urban Twins: Discussions with TAMM, the Abu Dhabi Government's integrated digital services platform, addressed the concept of an Alatau SuperApp and AI-powered municipal services. Talks with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) covered the U4SSC smart city KPIs, Digital Twin interoperability, and AI governance, while meetings with Gérard Wolf, Special Envoy of the French Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs for Sustainable Cities and Transport, and Dassault Systèmes explored an Urban Virtual Twin pilot. The delegation also visited the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC).
Infrastructure Finance & PPP: Bilateral meetings with KPMG Global, KPMG CASA, and EY focused on preparing an initial pipeline of bankable infrastructure projects for Alatau City, PPP structures for utilities, smart lighting, and transport, and access to international investors.
City-to-City Cooperation: The delegation met with the Madrid City Council Digital Office and Arup on digital governance and integrated urban planning, with Rotterdam's Chief Citiverse Officer on citiverse and digital twin initiatives, and with the LUCI Association and Leading Cities on urban lighting and resilience programs.
In the coming months, the Alatau City Authority will put these agreements into action through technical workshops on IoT reference architecture, data interoperability, and Digital Twin integration, the preparation of a Quectel IoT trial in Kazakhstan targeted to start in early 2027, joint pilot themes with MRANTI, and investment-ready documentation for priority infrastructure projects - accelerating Alatau City's emergence as Central Asia's leading smart, sustainable, and AI-enabled urban hub.
About Smart City Expo World Congress & Fira Barcelona
The Smart City Expo World Congress (SCEWC) has been held annually in Barcelona since 2011 and is the world's largest and most influential event for cities and urban innovation. It brings together a global ecosystem of city leaders, governments, companies, international organizations, and researchers driving the transformation of cities. The congress is organized by Fira de Barcelona, one of Europe's leading trade fair organizers.
