Firebird AI Opens $500 Million AI Computing Facility in Armenia, Plans 70,000 NVIDIA Chips

Firebird AI opened a more than $500 million artificial intelligence computing facility near Hrazdan on Saturday, launching a project that is expected to bring tens of thousands of advanced NVIDIA chips to Armenia and turn the country into a major regional center for AI infrastructure.

The facility is already operating and represents the first phase of a planned 300-megawatt computing campus. Firebird expects to install more than 70,000 NVIDIA Blackwell and Vera Rubin GPUs by the end of 2027, a scale the company says would put the Armenian site among Europe’s largest AI infrastructure projects.

Firebird also announced that NVIDIA intends to invest in the company. The planned investment follows backing from U.S. cloud computing company CoreWeave earlier this year. Financial terms were not disclosed.

NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang joined Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and technology executives at the opening, which drew diplomats, investors, researchers and government officials.

“AI factories are the infrastructure nations need to create intelligence, drive economic growth and compete in the AI era,” Huang said.

Huang said NVIDIA and Firebird are developing infrastructure in Armenia and Kazakhstan to give researchers, startups and businesses access to the computing power needed to build AI products locally.

Pashinyan described the opening as a result of Armenia’s growing technology ties with the United States, pointing to an agreement on AI and technology cooperation signed a year earlier.

“Exactly one year after signing the U.S.-Armenia Memorandum of Understanding on artificial intelligence and technology cooperation with President Donald Trump, we have this significant result,” Pashinyan said.

U.S. Chargé d’Affaires David Allen, Kazakhstan Deputy Prime Minister Zhaslan Madiyev, Armenian High-Tech Industry Minister Davit Tadevosyan, NVIDIA Vice President Rev Lebaredian and Firebird co-founders Razmik Hovaghimian and Alexander Yesayan were also among those taking part in the ceremony.

Firebird said Perplexity is among the first customers for the Armenian facility. The U.S. AI company plans to use Firebird’s computing capacity for its AI-powered answer engine and digital assistant services.

The project gives Armenia something increasingly valuable in the global technology industry: direct access to large amounts of advanced computing power.

Part of that capacity will be reserved for Armenian startups, universities, research centers and educational initiatives, including government-backed programs. Firebird says the arrangement is intended to allow Armenian researchers and companies to develop AI products without relying entirely on computing infrastructure abroad.

About 100 specialists will work at the facility during its initial phase. Firebird expects the project to eventually create more than 300 highly skilled jobs in Armenia.

Dell Technologies is providing infrastructure for the facility, which Firebird says was designed to handle dense deployments of advanced GPUs while making more efficient use of electricity and space.

“The future of artificial intelligence will be shaped by the organizations and countries that can turn vision into real capability,” Dell Technologies Chairman and CEO Michael Dell said.

Dell said the project could provide a foundation for Armenia to develop AI systems locally while expanding opportunities for research and economic growth.

The Hrazdan facility is built around NVIDIA’s DSX platform and Spectrum-X Ethernet networking. Firebird says the design allows it to install up to 40% more GPUs within the same footprint and make more efficient use of each megawatt of electricity.

The company also says the facility uses a closed-loop cooling system in which water is recirculated rather than continuously consumed or discharged into the environment.

Firebird is pursuing a similar expansion in Kazakhstan, where it has secured 125 megawatts of capacity at Data Center Valley. The company said that project has received approvals from the Kazakh government and export authorization from the U.S. Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security.

Other projects are also being developed in emerging markets. Firebird is targeting about 2 gigawatts of AI infrastructure worldwide by the end of 2028.

“As artificial intelligence becomes foundational infrastructure for every modern economy, countries need trusted partners capable of rapidly delivering secure and scalable AI platforms,” Hovaghimian, Firebird’s co-founder and CEO, said.

Yesayan said the Hrazdan site had been a construction zone only six months before Saturday’s opening.

“With a roadmap to deploy more than 70,000 NVIDIA Blackwell and Vera Rubin GPUs, Armenia is rapidly becoming one of Europe’s most important destinations for AI computing and a strategic hub in the global AI economy,” he said.

Firebird has already emerged as a significant taxpayer in Armenia. The company entered the country’s list of major taxpayers for the first time in the first half of 2026 after paying 823 million drams, or about $2.2 million, into the state budget.

Firebird AI is a U.S.- and Armenia-based cloud and AI infrastructure company focused on building large-scale GPU computing capacity. Its expansion in Armenia comes as governments and technology companies around the world compete for access to the advanced chips, data centers and electricity needed to develop increasingly powerful AI systems.

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