Starting gun for Central Asia data center race triggered

Saudi-backed Uzbek project to open year-end; Nvidia-supported Kazakh campus takes shape

TASHKENT/ISTANBUL — The race to build data centers in Central Asia is intensifying, with Uzbekistan set to complete the first phase of a facility by year-end and Kazakhstan’s Nvidia-backed project expected to offer 125 megawatts by 2027.

Uzbekistan’s TAS-1 is backed by Saudi Arabia’s DataVolt and its first plant will deliver 6 megawatts at Tashkent’s IT Park by year-end. This is the first step in a plan for reaching up to 500 MW across Uzbekistan over time, as the government wants to grow the market for AI products and services to $1.5 billion by 2030.

In Kazakhstan, the Data Center Valley at Ekibastuz, a coal-mining city in the north, is aiming to eventually offer a full gigawatt, wired with 100,000 next-generation Nvidia chips. The $10 billion deal is led by U.S. AI cloud and infrastructure firm Firebird and will be many times larger than the Uzbek one.

“I would view the Firebird and Nvidia agreement as strengthening Central Asia’s overall investment profile,” said Aruzhan Meirkhanova, a senior analyst at research firm Outpost Eurasia. “A solid project in one country can help attract more operators, capital, suppliers, and technical expertise to the region as a whole, particularly as cooperation among Central Asian countries continues to deepen.”

Indeed, money is pouring into Uzbekistan, DataVolt Chief Executive Rajit Nanda said, citing capital inflow from development finance institutions from the Gulf and Europe into the Tashkent project.

“This is true perestroika that is happening here in this country,” he told Nikkei Asia in a recent interview, using the Gorbachev-era word for restructuring.

Uzbekistan still needs to attract more clients to its project. Beeline Uzbekistan, the country’s mobile operator and the local arm of Nasdaq-listed telecom group VEON, has signed commercial terms to become one of the first tenants. U.S. software group Oracle has also signed a deal with the digital ministry, but both are preliminary and neither is an AI customer.

Away from this project, Uzbektelecom, the state operator, is adding data center capacity in Tashkent, Bukhara and Kokand with Japanese partners Toyota Tsusho, Internet Initiative Japan (IIJ), NEC and NTT Communications. Japan’s Muroosystems Group has signed a deal for a 50-MW site meant to run entirely on small modular nuclear reactors, none of which is operating yet.

DataVolt Chief Executive Rajit Nanda says the Tashkent project uses tradable certificates as part of “greening” efforts. (DataVolt)

Kazakhstan is chasing the same prize on a different scale. The government said the Data Center Valley has drawn interest from more than 20 hyperscale companies from the U.S., China and India, and has already produced preliminary demand for over 100 MW. Neither Firebird nor Nvidia could be reached for comment.

For now, the structural advantage is with Kazakhstan. It has far larger generation capacity, cheaper power, more developed transmission and more industrial land — the things hyperscale operators weigh first, said Sobir Kurbanov, an international development expert and fellow at Nightingale Int., an advisory firm focused on Central Asia.

The Firebird agreement widens that lead, giving Data Center Valley a more visible proposition for international anchor tenants. But Kurbanov said the contest isn’t a zero-sum game.

“Uzbekistan’s objective should not necessarily be to win every hyperscale investment in the next few years, but to build the strongest long-term value proposition for AI and the digital economy,” said Kurbanov.

Countries will gain from an expansion of the ecosystem into cloud services, software engineering, fintech and cybersecurity, among others. Already, Uzbekistan’s IT-service exports reached $940 million in 2025, while Kazakhstan’s were higher at $1.14 billion.

Domestically, demand for digital services in Uzbekistan could surpass Kazakhstan’s, given that its population is nearly twice that of its larger neighbor. This demand, though, must be supported by infrastructure, such as affordable power, strong connectivity and technical skills, analysts said.

The issue for both countries is that data centers need large, reliable electricity supplies, while some cooling systems also consume substantial water, resources that neither country has in abundance. DataVolt said TAS-1 will use entirely dry heat rejection, minimizing its water needs.

While there has been a drive to renewables, both countries still rely heavily on fossil fuels. Coal supplied 51.4% of Kazakhstan’s electricity in 2025, while just 30% of Uzbekistan’s electricity could be considered green energy, with gas covering much of the rest.

Kazakhstan’s Ekibastuz offers cheaper, concentrated baseload power and greater immediate scale, but Uzbekistan offers a lower-carbon national mix and a faster renewable build-out. Operators weigh the carbon content of the power used, data-residency rules, connectivity and room to grow, and Ekibastuz’s reliance on coal may deter clients with decarbonization targets, analysts said.

Firebird is building an AI factory in Armenia using Nvidia graphic processing units. (Screen grab from video on Firebird website) 

“Uzbekistan’s electricity mix is currently less carbon-intensive than Kazakhstan’s,” Meirkhanova said. “For data center operators, however, carbon intensity is only one part of the equation.”

Although DataVolt’s owner Vision Invest owns a minority stake in ACWA Power, TAS-1 does not have any supply deal with the company.

Nanda said DataVolt’s approach to greening the facility would be progressive and would expand over time. The facility is designed to Tier III standards, meaning it has spare power and cooling equipment ready to take over, so a unit can be serviced without worries about it going down. Backup generators are meant to ride out the outages that still hit the grid.

To improve its green credentials, DataVolt plans to use tradable International Renewable Energy Certificates — issued for renewable electricity fed into the grid — to match TAS-1’s consumption with renewable generation hour by hour.

“The project can therefore make a credible low-carbon or transitional claim, but calling it fully green would require additional renewable capacity, storage and verifiable clean-power delivery,” said Umud Shokri, a visiting senior fellow at George Mason University.

Public documents from Kazakhstan’s Data Center Valley have not named any renewable certificates, clean-power contract or dedicated green supply. Kazakhstan, in fact, pitches cheap power as the draw for hyperscale tenants and casts the plan, in its own words, as “transforming Ekibastuz coal into digital export revenue.”

https://asia.nikkei.com/business/technology/artificial-intelligence/starting-gun-for-central-asia-data-center-race-triggered