Technology company NVIDIA plans to build a $500 million artificial intelligence supercomputing data center in Armenia in collaboration with Firebird, a San Francisco and Yerevan-based AI cloud company. According to the Firebird announcement, NVIDIA will deploy its Blackwell graphics processing units at the site, offering to provide over 100 megawatts of capacity.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan called the partnership a “major step” toward growing the country’s tech industry and global partnerships. “The government is happy to support this initiative and unlock new opportunities for our people and region,” he said.
Irish company Imagine Broadband and Telecom Armenia parent company Team Group will provide technical expertise and connectivity infrastructure to support the data center. In addition, the Afeyan Foundation for Armenia will become a Firebird founding investor, with its principal, Noubar Afeyan, acting as strategic adviser and founding partner.
Innovation, Robotics and the Sciences
Razmig Hovaghimian, Firebird co-founder and CEO, characterized the collaboration as “building a launchpad for innovation.” “We will invest in novel models, in robotics and the sciences in partnership with leading universities from around the world and build the capacity to incubate the next generation of innovators in Armenia,” he said.
Firebird co-founder Afeyan noted that global partnerships and long-term investment will allow Armenia to contribute to AI infrastructure development in the Caucasus region and worldwide.