Kazakhstan signed a package of agreements worth up to $10 billion with the US startup Firebird and chipmaker Nvidia on June 15, aiming to turn the Central Asian energy producer into a regional AI hub. The deals were finalized in talks led by Prime Minister Olzhas Bektenov, with Nvidia Vice President Rev Lebaredian and Firebird CEO Razmig Hovaghimian.
At the center is Data Center Valley, a planned computing campus in Ekibastuz, in the northeastern Pavlodar region. The project would start at 300 megawatts of power capacity and scale toward 1 gigawatt, which officials say would make it the largest data center campus in Central Asia.
The investment would fund a cluster of 100,000 advanced Nvidia GPUs, including the company’s GB300 and Vera Rubin platforms. Kazakhstan projects it will generate at least $3 billion in annual export revenue and create thousands of skilled jobs.
The package includes a strategic cooperation agreement between Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development and Firebird, which will set up a local arm called Firebird Labs Kazakhstan, plus a binding term sheet between state operator Kazakhtelecom and Firebird to implement the campus. Firebird’s pitch leans on a similar project it is building in Armenia, and the company says a 2027 launch could place Kazakhstan among the world’s top 10 countries for AI infrastructure.
The country’s main selling point is energy. Nvidia’s Lebaredian described Kazakhstan’s power resources as the foundation for a full AI ecosystem, and the Ekibastuz site sits beside large coal plants that can supply cheap electricity. The government is adding tax incentives and utility connections to attract investors.
The deal follows President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s approval of a national Digital Qazaqstan strategy that aims to accelerate AI adoption through 2029, and his goal of making the country fully digital within three years. Kazakhstan is also positioning itself as a neutral location between China, Russia and Europe at a time when AI compute is increasingly shaped by export controls.
What’s at Stake for Kazakhstan
A working hub would mark a major shift for an economy long built on oil, coal and metals. Hosting global AI workloads could diversify exports, draw international technology firms and build domestic technical talent. The broader Data Center Valley vision is even larger than this deal: officials have sought around $30 billion in total investment and held talks with Microsoft, OpenAI, G42 and Mubadala. Cheap power and a central location give Kazakhstan a genuine edge as data centers chase electricity that is scarce in many Western markets.
Reasons for Caution
The gap between announcement and execution is wide. Kazakhstan has a history of large technology memorandums that stalled, and several details around the project have been hard to verify independently. Freedom Holding Corp., a separate company tied to an earlier version of the data center plan, warned US regulators that its AI infrastructure bets, including Nvidia-supplied GPUs, may not succeed and rest on a non-binding agreement.
Reliance on coal power also raises questions about cost and emissions. The figures announced are ambitions backed by fresh agreements, not a finished facility, and the 2027 timeline leaves little room for the permitting, power and supply-chain hurdles that large AI campuses routinely face.
