The 3rd International Olympiad in Artificial Intelligence (IOAI) opened in Astana, bringing together more than 400 young AI talents from 106 countries, according to Bagdat Mussin, Chairman of the Board of JSC Kazakhtelecom, at the ceremony. Mussin said the event reflects Kazakhstan's commitment to developing a digital economy and nurturing future innovators, noting participants are united by a shared ambition to build technologies that improve lives. He stated that studies show International Olympiad medalists are 15,000 times more likely to become billionaires and 4,000 times more likely to build unicorn companies than the average person. Mussin cited companies such as OpenAI, Stripe, Cursor and Perplexity as founded by people with similar backgrounds, suggesting the next major AI company could emerge from this year's competition. He highlighted that the Kazakhstan Competitive Programming Federation (CPFED), with government, academia and industry partners, is building an AI-ready Kazakhstan through education initiatives, including the President's AI Sana program. Mussin also announced that Telegram founder Pavel Durov, unable to attend, is announcing a collection of 240 exclusive intelligence caps and a certain amount of NFTs for the winners, with every medalist receiving one of these exclusive awards. President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev officially opened the Olympiad, calling for safe and responsible development of artificial intelligence.