Kazakhstan is building a 5 billion dollar AI data center hub with Nvidia chips
Kazakhstan is building a 5 billion dollar AI data center hub with Nvidia chips
Kazakhstan is building Data Center Valley at Ekibastuz, in the country's northeast, a technology cluster meant to put the country on the global AI map. Total investment is expected to reach around 5 billion dollars, with capacity eventually reaching 1 gigawatt.
The project is being built with US AI infrastructure firm Firebird and chipmaker Nvidia. Firebird has secured a US export licence for 45,000 Nvidia Grace Blackwell graphics processors for the first phase, a 109-megawatt cluster being built with state telecoms operator Kazakhtelecom, with commercial operations targeted for the third quarter of 2027.
All 215 megawatts of the first phase's capacity are already reserved, and the first 50-megawatt data center is expected to start operating in the second quarter of 2027. Up to 10 percent of Firebird's GPU capacity will go to Kazakh companies and government agencies.
Why it matters: Kazakhstan is turning its old coal-and-power region into an export product for the AI age, cheap energy plus computing power sold abroad. If it works, Ekibastuz stops being just a coal town and becomes a node in the global AI supply chain. The risks are execution, power supply and whether chip supplies keep flowing.
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