Take Off Istanbul 2025 has begun

Take Off Istanbul 2025 will take place at the Istanbul Expo Center.

The summit, which took place for the 8th time this year, brings together more than 500 startups and more than 250 investors from 40 countries. The event, the most comprehensive entrepreneurial summit in the region, brings together the ecosystem's leading stakeholders.

The event began with the opening speech of Industry and Technology Minister Mehmet Fatih Kacır. Following Kacır's speech, Steve Nouri, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of GenAI Works, gave a talk entitled “LLM Alone is Not Enough: New Rules to Make a Competitive Difference.”

In his speech, Nouri explained that this year is a very exciting year for artificial intelligence and that a lot of different innovation news has come from different countries and companies around the world.

Pointing out that 2024 is a very interesting year, Nouri said: “Last year, many companies in the field of productive artificial intelligence had the opportunity to announce their new products one after another. We saw a rise in artificial intelligence that can perform multiple tasks at the same time,” he said.

Explaining that Google initially seemed to be behind in the race for productive artificial intelligence, Nouri knew that they would come back due to the large amount of data, saying: “With the new version of Gemini, this has actually happened. There have been such rapid developments in artificial intelligence that when a model comes out, we immediately adopt it and wait for the new model.” he said.

The session “From QR Codes to Artificial Intelligence: Fintech's Global Journey” was moderated by General Manager and Chairman of DSM Payment ve Elektronik Para Hizmetleri AŞ, Dündar Özdemir, with the participation of Ant International Manager Alex Jin.

Jin explained that the services they offer help their local partners create digital wallets, and they offer their technology and operational expertise to their customers in different countries around the world.

Jin explained that they have developed a solution called Alipay+ for cross-border payments and localization: “We built this based on the knowledge and knowledge we learned from the end-user group and Alipay based on the transformation process from a payment tool to a super application.” he said.

Jin stated that they offer 1.8 billion users using more than 40 digital wallets on Alipay+ the opportunity to connect with 150 million sellers in more than 100 markets.

Special programs such as “Entrepreneur Event” and “International Investor Meeting” are organized

The summit, which hosted around 1,000 startups since its first event in 2018, made a significant contribution to the ecosystem with a total investment support of $1.8 million.

International participation in the event, which this year involved 80 partners and 13 sponsoring institutions, has also increased. Spain, Bangladesh, North Macedonia and Uzbekistan brought the outstanding initiatives of their ecosystems to Take Off Istanbul with their country pavilions.

The summit will offer investment discussions and extensive networking opportunities to strengthen international cooperation. Special programs such as “Entrepreneur Event” and “International Investor Meeting” are also at the forefront to help participants make new business contacts.

This year, topics such as productive artificial intelligence, deep technology, FinTech innovations, global investment trends and sustainability stand out in the Take Off main stage program. In addition, special training courses are organized for students to support young talent in the ecosystem.

To attend Take Off Istanbul 2025, which continues tomorrow, registration as a visitor is required at “https://takeoffistanbul.com/tr/”.