Firebird launches Armenia AI factory with plans for 70,000 NVIDIA Rubin and Blackwell GPUs

Firebird has launched what NVIDIA describes as the CIS region's largest AI factory in Armenia, marking another step in the global race to build local, sovereign and commercially available AI compute capacity.

The project brings together Firebird, NVIDIA, Dell Technologies, CoreWeave and regional leaders. According to NVIDIA's August 8 announcement, the Armenia facility is built around NVIDIA accelerated computing and Dell high-performance AI infrastructure, with power and cooling support from Schneider Electric and Vertiv. The launch ceremony was attended by Armenian prime minister Nikol Pashinyan, Kazakhstan deputy prime minister Zhaslan Madiyev and David Allen, the U.S. chargé d'affaires in Armenia.

What Firebird is building

Firebird says the site is meant to give developers, startups, enterprises, universities and public institutions in Armenia access to compute for training, fine-tuning and deploying AI models closer to home. That local angle is important: countries increasingly want capacity for their own languages, industries and public-sector priorities instead of relying entirely on distant hyperscale regions.

The numbers are large for an emerging AI cloud. NVIDIA says Firebird plans to deploy more than 70,000 NVIDIA Rubin and Blackwell GPUs and 300 megawatts of AI infrastructure capacity in Armenia by the end of 2027. Firebird is also pursuing an approximately 2-gigawatt AI infrastructure roadmap across Armenia, Kazakhstan and additional markets. Co-founder Alexander Yesayan said the company's ambition over roughly the next two years is about 2 gigawatts of capacity globally, with a focus on frontier markets.

The facility uses NVIDIA's DSX platform, which combines accelerated computing, networking, power and cooling into a coordinated system. NVIDIA claims DSX can run up to 40% more GPUs on the same footprint, a key metric for operators trying to convert scarce power and space into useful AI throughput.

Why it matters

AI infrastructure is increasingly a geopolitical and economic development issue, not just a cloud procurement decision. Large GPU clusters can attract model builders, enterprise AI workloads and research projects, while also putting pressure on local grids, cooling systems and data-center supply chains.

For Armenia, Firebird's pitch is that the AI factory can become both a magnet for global AI companies and a platform for local developers and researchers. NVIDIA said Perplexity is among the early AI-native companies working with Firebird to access high-performance AI infrastructure for its agent platform and answer engine.

The announcement is also notable because NVIDIA says it intends to invest in Firebird, following an earlier investment by CoreWeave. That ties a regional data-center buildout to two of the most visible players in the AI infrastructure boom, and it shows how GPU supply, power engineering and local economic strategy are becoming tightly linked.

Sources

• blogs.nvidia.com

Cover image: D Coetzee, source, licensed under CC0.