Bloomberg highlights Armenia’s emergence as major AI infrastructure hub

(Horizon Media / YEREVAN) — Armenia is positioning itself as an increasingly important centre for artificial intelligence infrastructure, with the recently opened Firebird AI facility in Hrazdan expected to become one of Europe’s largest computing clusters, Bloomberg reported Tuesday.

The San Francisco-based company officially opened its AI factory in August, launching what NVIDIA described as the largest facility of its kind in the CIS region. Firebird plans to expand the Hrazdan complex to more than 70,000 NVIDIA Blackwell and Rubin GPUs and approximately 300 megawatts of computing capacity by the end of 2027.

Bloomberg placed the project within Armenia’s longer technological history, noting that the country was an important electronics and engineering centre during the Soviet period and has retained a substantial pool of technical expertise.

Armenia’s relationship with NVIDIA began taking shape well before the current AI boom. Nikol Pashinyan visited NVIDIA headquarters in California in 2019 and discussed potential cooperation with CEO Jensen Huang. NVIDIA subsequently established a presence in Armenia in 2022.

Firebird’s project represents a significant expansion of that relationship. NVIDIA has said it intends to invest in Firebird, while Dell Technologies is providing much of the computing infrastructure. US-based AI company Perplexity is among the facility’s first announced customers.

Part of the computing capacity is also being directed toward Armenia’s domestic technology sector. Earlier this year, the Armenian government announced a five-year, $25-million program to purchase computing resources from Firebird for startups, universities, researchers and AI specialists through the government’s Artificial Intelligence Virtual Institute.

The project has also become closely connected with the rapid expansion of Armenia-US technological ties.

Bloomberg reported, citing people involved in Armenia-Azerbaijan negotiations, that the Trump administration used the prospect of approving exports of advanced NVIDIA processors to Armenia as part of broader US efforts to advance the peace process. A separate Wall Street Journal investigation published earlier this month similarly reported that expanded access to advanced chips was presented to Armenia as part of a wider package of economic and technological cooperation.

Washington ultimately approved licences for tens of thousands of additional advanced NVIDIA processors. In February, Firebird announced that US authorities had authorized exports of another 41,000 NVIDIA GB300 GPUs for the project, bringing its planned expansion into the multibillion-dollar range.

Firebird is simultaneously expanding beyond Armenia, including into Kazakhstan, and says its international AI infrastructure network could reach roughly two gigawatts of capacity by the end of 2028.

For Armenia, the Hrazdan project gives the country something increasingly strategic in the global AI economy: direct access to large-scale advanced computing infrastructure. If Firebird’s planned expansion is completed, Armenia would host a computing cluster of a scale rarely found in countries of comparable size, strengthening its position in the rapidly developing global AI sector.