Firebird and NVIDIA Join Kazakhstan’s $10 Billion Data Center Valley Project
June 29, 2026
Firebird and NVIDIA Join Kazakhstan’s $10 Billion Data Center Valley Project
Kazakhstan is pushing forward with ambitious plans to build a massive “data center valley” in the Pavlodar Region, with U.S.-based cloud and infrastructure technology company Firebird confirmed as a key participant. The project, backed by chip giant NVIDIA, reflects Astana’s drive to secure sovereign computing capacity for domestic artificial intelligence initiatives rather than depending on foreign platforms.
Prime Minister Olzhas Bektenov outlined the strategy during a joint session of parliament last week, emphasizing that Kazakhstan must develop its own large-scale computing infrastructure. Currently, all government data is hosted in a 6-megawatt data center in Astana, a facility that Bektenov described as insufficient for the country’s growing needs. The next phase, he said, involves a sharp expansion of capacity in Ekibastuz, an industrial and energy hub in the Pavlodar Region.
Bektenov detailed the rollout schedule, stating that a 125-megawatt data center will be launched in Ekibastuz in the first half of next year, followed by an identical 125-megawatt facility in 2028. These two facilities represent the initial building blocks of a much larger data center valley. He confirmed that Firebird, a company specializing in AI infrastructure and high-performance computing systems, had agreed to participate in the development, with plans to invest approximately $10 billion in the project.
“The main partner of this company is NVIDIA, and we view these companies as reliable strategic partners. A $10 billion investment from Firebird alone is highly significant,” Bektenov said. NVIDIA’s involvement adds substantial weight to the project, as the company is the world’s leading supplier of advanced chips used to train and run AI models. Its graphics processing units have become central to the global AI boom, and in October 2025, NVIDIA became the first publicly traded company to reach a market capitalization of $5 trillion.
Kazakhstan’s government said in a statement that partnerships with companies such as Firebird and NVIDIA would strengthen the country’s “digital sovereignty” and create a foundation for AI computing. Officials have also presented the project as a future source of export revenue, with computing power sold to international clients. Power supply will be central to the project’s viability. The government has said 300 MW of power capacity is already available for the Ekibastuz project, with phased expansion planned to 1 GW. That gives the site an obvious advantage, but it also ties Kazakhstan’s AI ambitions to one of the country’s main coal-power centers.
Kazakhstan has also secured agreements with other foreign investors as it expands its data center ambitions. Singapore’s GK Hyperscale Ltd is building two data centers in the Akmola and Karaganda regions, while China’s SuperX AI Technology Limited is considering a 1-gigawatt AI data center cluster in Kazakhstan. These projects are part of Kazakhstan’s broader strategy to position itself as a regional hub for digital infrastructure and AI computing in Central Asia. For now, much of the ambition remains at the agreement and construction stage.
Source: timesca
