Firebird’s Armenia Factory Is Sovereign Capacity — 70k GPUs Is Still a Roadmap
Firebird opened what it and NVIDIA call the CIS region’s largest DSX AI factory in Hrazdan, Armenia — ~6,144 B200 Blackwell GPUs in phase one, a >70,000 Rubin/Blackwell and ~300 MW path by end-2027, NVIDIA investment intent, and Kazakhstan as a second market. Operational factory open, not an MOU ribbon-cutting.
Frontier training and inference are bottlenecked by where GPUs, power, and export licenses land. A CIS/Europe-adjacent Blackwell cluster with NVIDIA equity intent is concrete non-U.S. capacity under a U.S. stack — if the 70k roadmap is contracted, not aspirational.
Firebird officially opened what it and NVIDIA call the CIS region’s largest AI factory, in Hrazdan, Armenia. The plant is built on the NVIDIA DSX AI factory reference design with Dell infrastructure and Spectrum-X networking. Phase-one coverage cites on the order of 6,144 NVIDIA B200 Blackwell GPUs (~15–18 MW). Firebird’s roadmap scales beyond 70,000 NVIDIA Rubin and Blackwell GPUs and about 300 MW by end of 2027, with a multi-country pipeline aiming for roughly 2 GW by end of 2028. NVIDIA intends to invest in Firebird (after CoreWeave earlier this year). Perplexity is named as an early customer. Kazakhstan is the second market (125 MW at Data Center Valley) with BIS export authorization noted.
What launched
| Fact | Detail (Firebird primary / NVIDIA blog / PR) |
|---|---|
| Place | Hrazdan, Armenia |
| Class | Largest NVIDIA DSX AI factory in the CIS region (per Firebird/NVIDIA) |
| Phase-one scale | ~6,144 NVIDIA B200 Blackwell GPUs; ~15–18 MW in contemporaneous tech coverage |
| 2027 roadmap | >70,000 NVIDIA Rubin + Blackwell GPUs; ~300 MW |
| Design stack | NVIDIA DSX; Spectrum-X Ethernet; Dell; Schneider Electric / Vertiv cited in NVIDIA social |
| Economics claim | Up to ~40% more GPUs in the same footprint vs prior designs (Firebird) |
| Capital | NVIDIA investment intent; CoreWeave prior investment this year |
| Customers | Perplexity among first customers |
| Second market | Kazakhstan — 125 MW at Data Center Valley; U.S. BIS export authorization referenced |
| Global target | ~2 GW by end-2028 across Armenia, Kazakhstan, and other frontier markets |
The inauguration featured Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, NVIDIA founder/CEO Jensen Huang, NVIDIA’s Rev Lebaredian, U.S. embassy representation, and Kazakh government leadership — sovereign AI infrastructure diplomacy, not only a colo ribbon-cutting. Infra / financing / sovereign-compute story, not a model GA. The operational factory open is the ship.
Limits
- Phase-one GPU/MW figures lean on contemporaneous tech coverage alongside Firebird/NVIDIA primaries.
- How much of the 70k / 300 MW / 2 GW path is contracted vs aspirational is not fully disclosed.
- Kazakhstan phase execution under BIS terms is still ahead.
Sources
- Firebird: Opens the Region’s Largest AI Factory and Announces Global Expansion (August 8, 2026)
- NVIDIA Blog: Firebird Launches CIS Region’s Largest AI Factory in Armenia (August 8, 2026)
- PR Newswire: Firebird Opens the Region’s Largest AI Factory (August 8, 2026)
- MLQ / industry recaps: 6,144-GPU Blackwell phase-one detail (August 8, 2026)