Founded by 18-year-old 2x founder, Arlan Rakhmetzhanov, Nia is a product of pure technical ambition, and deep frustration. Having taught himself to code at high school in Kazakhstan, and after launching multiple products including an education platform that’s reached thousands of students, Rakhmetzhanov became increasingly frustrated by the limits of today’s AI coding tools.

ChatGPT is great for quick, one-off tasks but fails to scale. Editors like Cursor and Windsurf embed AI naturally into developer workflows, but are limited by narrow context windows and understanding. Rakhmetzhanov saw that modern developers were spending too much time babysitting AI rather than writing code, because no tool could truly handle large complex codebases, update knowledge in real-time, or answer complex questions with context.

After cold-calling his way into a research role under Stanford’s Ilya Strebulaev, one of the world’s leading venture capital professors, Rakhmetzhanov set out to build Nia – the AI teammate he always wanted; a new class of autonomous engineer that acts like a colleague, not just a co-pilot, and understands codebases as deeply as the developers who wrote them.

Arlan Rakhmetzhanov, Founder of Nia, said: “Every AI coding assistant I tried forgot where things lived in my repository – spitting out files that didn’t follow my patterns, duplicating logic, or hallucinating. I wanted to build an AI teammate that actually remembered my project, pointed me to the right places, and let me skip the busywork; an assistant that understood my code as well as I did. This was the inspiration behind Nia and it’s built on a simple idea: stop fighting your tools and let them help you build.”

Introducing Nia: superpowers, not shortcuts

Nia’s power comes from the fact it can build deep, real-time mental models of any codebase and connect millions of lines of code across projects into a unified knowledge graph.

Developers can query Nia directly from API, Cursor, Slack, and more and get instant, accurate, context-aware answers in seconds. From here, they can use Nia to automate tedious yet critical tasks, like navigating unfamiliar systems or stitching together logic across projects, and accelerating onboarding.

Far from wanting to replace developers, though, Nia acts like a teammate: helping engineers get up to speed quickly and stay productive. It accelerates learning by making knowledge accessible within the workflow, transforming onboarding and exploration from weeks into minutes.

In short, Nia gives developers superpowers, not shortcuts.

Early momentum

The London-headquartered startup is already live in beta with a powerful set of features. Engineers can ask questions across multiple repositories at once to quickly find answers without switching context, or leaving their terminal. With a Slack integration, new team members can tag @Nia in their channels to get instant insights about the codebase to streamline onboarding.

Through its MCP server, Nia adds an extra layer of context for any agent that supports the protocol, boosting its understanding of large, complex projects. And with a unified API, teams can plug Nia into their systems to build custom workflows and automations using Nia’s engine.

Kazakhstan: emerging tech hub

Arlan’s success in raising a pre-seed round in days is testament to the fact talent is truly global. Founders from Central Asia are increasingly on the radar of investors in Europe and the US after the country began a concerted effort to attract tech companies and talent.

Kazakhstan alone is one of the fastest growing emerging tech hubs in the world - having created $26bn in tech value in just six years, according to Dealroom data. Since 2019, the value of Kazakhstan’s tech sector has grown 18 fold at a time when other tech sectors globally have grown on average 2.6 times.  This unprecedented growth comes as the country seeks to lessen its reliance on natural resources.

Emma Phillips, Partner at LocalGlobe said: "Arlan is one of the most driven founders we’ve met – teaching himself to code, shipping multiple products, cold-emailing his way into Stanford, and building Nia entirely on his own before even turning 18. He’s not just building a better AI tool; he’s setting the standard for what AI teammates can be. All while laying the foundations for a business where the most ambitious developers will want to work.”

The funding will be used to expand the technical team –  including hiring a founding engineer for backend AI infrastructure – refine Nia’s core agent capabilities, and scale access to more engineering teams worldwide. 

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