With a Nobel laureate, technology pioneers and international investors converging on Azerbaijan, PASHA Holding’s INMerge is building something the region has long lacked: an innovation ecosystem connecting ambitious founders with the capital and customers they need to grow.
Azerbaijan made its fortune from the oil and gas beneath the Caspian. Now it is investing in talent, a resource with no geographical limits. In Baku, a city transformed by energy wealth, a new economic ambition is taking shape around technology and entrepreneurship, with the country seeking a larger role in the innovation economy emerging between Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East.
On November 30 and December 1, the Baku Convention Center will host the sixth INMerge Innovation Summit, organised by PASHA Holding, one of Azerbaijan’s largest investment groups. Among the headline speakers are Joel Mokyr, the Nobel Prize winning economic historian whose research explores how technological progress drives prosperity, former Google X executive Mo Gawdat and Greg Hoffman, the creative strategist who helped shape Nike’s global identity.
Their presence points to a bigger issue facing the region’s economic future. Talent is increasingly distributed across the world, but the investment networks and commercial opportunities that turn promising ideas into international businesses remain heavily concentrated in established technology centres. For entrepreneurs in
the Caucasus and Central Asia, gaining access to those networks can be as important as developing the technology itself.
INMerge was created in 2021 to address that imbalance. The region already had capable founders and growing investment appetite, but its innovation communities often operated in isolation. PASHA Holding saw an opportunity to bring international expertise into the region while creating stronger connections between local entrepreneurs and the investors and businesses capable of helping them grow.
The scale of the response illustrates the appetite. In 2025, INMerge welcomed more than 5,000 participants, with over 180 speakers, 122 startups and 80 investors. Previous guests have included Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak, YouTube cofounder Steve Chen, Netflix cofounder Marc Randolph and Amazon technology chief Werner Vogels.
Yet attracting famous names to Baku is the easier part. The real challenge is turning the conversations taking place at a conference into investment decisions and businesses capable of competing internationally.
That is where INMerge’s wider architecture comes in. Its Investment Forum brings together fund managers and institutional investors, while INMerge Ventures provides early stage financing to technology businesses across the region. Through PASHA Holding’s corporate network, founders can also gain access to established
customers, helping bridge the difficult gap between developing a promising product and persuading a major company to buy it.
“INMerge is about creating opportunities that didn’t exist before, connecting the talent of our region with the people, capital and ideas that can help it compete on the world stage.”
Jalal Gasimov, CEO, PASHA Holding
Regional events in Istanbul, Tashkent and Berlin are putting the region’s founders in front of investors they might otherwise never meet. The aim is a network in which an entrepreneur in Kazakhstan can find capital in Azerbaijan, expertise in Europe and customers across several markets.
For Jalal Gasimov, CEO of PASHA Holding, the thinking starts with people.
“AI is making knowledge and skills cheaper every year,” he says. “What it cannot replace is judgment, the ability to make good decisions when the picture is incomplete.”
Access to sophisticated technology is becoming easier, but building successful businesses still depends on experienced leadership and institutions capable of supporting growth. INMerge is helping to build both in a region whose entrepreneurial potential has often been overlooked by international investors.
Azerbaijan already occupies an important position in the physical networks connecting Asia and Europe, through the Middle Corridor and the expanding port at Alat. INMerge applies the same logic to the innovation economy, giving Baku an opportunity to become a destination for investment and enterprise in its own right.
“What I would really like is for Azerbaijan to become a platform, not simply a transit route,” Gasimov says. “Geography matters, but history shows that geography alone has never made a country successful.”
Baku photo credit – Liilia Moroz
