Jun 12, 2026
“Data sovereignty and no vendor lock-in”
On the evening of 10 June, another round of marathon negotiations began in Hong Kong. The first meeting took place with James Chen, Vice-President of JD Group.
Background: JD Group is China’s largest private company. It operates in logistics, online retail, the development of infrastructure management platforms, data centres and AI solutions for public administration. According to the spokesperson, its revenue in 2025 stood at $187.2 billion (44th place in the Fortune Global 500). It employs over 900,000 staff and serves 700 million individual customers and eight million corporate clients. JD was founded in 1998 and has been listed on the Nasdaq since 2014.
Representatives from JD presented the ‘One Network Smart Governance’ concept to the Kazakhstani side – a unified city management platform where all data, systems and services operate within a single ecosystem.
A company representative clarified that such solutions have already been implemented in Datong, Shanghai’s Lingang and Wuhan in China. According to him, in Wuhan, which has a population of three million, the efficiency of city management has increased by 14 per cent, whilst costs have fallen by 25 per cent.
“The next Silicon Valley doesn’t have to be in Silicon Valley”
The delegation then met with Lily Liu, President of the Solana Foundation. The Kazakhstani side reiterated its ambitious plan: they intend to turn Alatau into a fully-fledged crypto-city with 100 per cent tokenisation, its own stablecoin and digital currencies.
Kazakhstan proposed a number of specific steps for cooperation to the Solana Foundation, in particular:
• support for promoting Alatau as a regional hub for Web3 capital,
• engaging ecosystem participants and involving experts in the development of digital asset regulation,
• launching joint talent development programmes: residency programmes, accelerators, educational initiatives,
• launching pilot projects as early as 2026 or 2027, including the tokenisation of properties in Alatau.
The memorandum between the Alatau City Authority and the Solana Foundation was officially signed by the parties the following day, 11 June, during the Alatau City Roadshow roundtable.
Following the roundtable, the parties signed six memoranda of understanding, notably with Solana, ANT Digital, SRG, Dasco Capital and Templewater Group.
Read more: https://tengrinews.kz/article/jd-nas-karmane-glavnyi-konkurent-alibaba-zainteresovalsia-4150/