During the first six months of the year, residents of Uzbekistan spent about 113 billion soums on foreign AI service subscriptions. For the first time, three neural network developers entered the top ten foreign IT providers, displacing traditional entertainment platforms.
What happened
Foreign internet companies paying VAT in Uzbekistan provided 1.2 trillion soums in digital services over six months. This is 83% higher than the same period last year.
As noted by the author of the Skartariss Telegram channel, three companies specializing exclusively in artificial intelligence entered the top 10 foreign providers for the first time:
- Anthropic (developer of Claude);
- OpenAI (creator of ChatGPT);
- Anysphere (developer of the Cursor code editor).
Together, these three services provided 113 billion soums in services. On average, Uzbekistan residents spend about $1.5 million monthly on their products. Anthropic outpaced OpenAI in revenue volume in the country.
Country and market
Historically, entertainment, communication, and gaming platforms—Netflix, Zoom, Xsolla—occupied the top spots in spending on foreign digital services in Uzbekistan.
The appearance of three AI companies in the top tier, one of which (Cursor) is a highly specialized development environment for programmers, indicates a shift in consumption patterns. Users are starting to pay not just for content, but for productivity-enhancing tools.
Why it matters
The numbers confirm a qualitative shift in the country’s digitalization. A growing generation of specialists is integrating paid neural networks into their daily work.
The market is moving from consuming entertainment content to purchasing professional tools, directly reflecting the growth of the IT sector and the number of developers in Uzbekistan.
What’s next
For local fintech, this signals the formation of a large new niche. Banks and payment services will need to adapt their products to the growing demand for foreign AI subscriptions, offering convenient transaction routes or specialized B2B solutions for IT companies.