AI - The Times Of Central Asia

Viewing results 1 - 6 of 110

Data Center Valley

Can Kazakhstan Power Its AI Ambitions?

For now, it is only a vast construction site lost in the steppe, a few kilometers from Ekibastuz, a mining city in northern Kazakhstan. Cranes move behind fences in the shadow of a Soviet-era power station. It is hard to imagine that, from 2027, this site is supposed to become the first piece of a giant artificial intelligence campus. Known as Data Center Valley, the project is eventually expected to reach one gigawatt. At full capacity, it could consume as much as 8.8 terawatt-hours a year, Kazakh media Qyzyq estimated, around 7% of Kazakhstan’s current electricity generation. Development will be gradual, with an initial 50-megawatt facility scheduled to enter service in June 2027. U.S.-based Firebird.ai and state-controlled Kazakhtelecom are leading the industrial project. Yet the futuristic bet collides with a more prosaic reality. “Economic and industrial growth in Kazakhstan is currently outpacing the rate of commissioning and modernization of generating capacity,” the Ministry of Energy acknowledged in a response to The Times of Central Asia. In 2025, the gap between domestic generation and consumption reached 1.5 terawatt-hours, forcing the country to import electricity, mainly from Russia. President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has acknowledged the scale of the challenge. At the National Kurultai in January, he said data centers consume electricity on a scale comparable to metallurgical plants and that Kazakhstan’s existing generation was “clearly insufficient” for its development plans. He called energy self-sufficiency a key state priority and ordered an expansion of generating capacity, including new coal-fired power. How, then, can Kazakhstan power a campus that could consume almost six times that shortfall? More strikingly, when the government prepared its 2026 electricity forecast, neither Data Center Valley nor any other AI or data-center project was included. The ministry says they will enter its calculations from 2027 - the same year the first facility is due to start operating. [caption id="attachment_54529" align="aligncenter" width="1774"] The mine of Bogatyr is expanding to increase production[/caption] From Coal to Algorithms In Ekibastuz, the answer comes down to one word: coal. “In essence, Kazakhstan is turning Ekibastuz coal into export digital revenue,” Kazakhtelecom chairman Bagdat Musin has said. Electricity generated locally would be converted into computing services sold internationally. No major named customer contract has been announced, although Firebird says it holds guaranteed service contracts with global players. Amazon and G42 have been named as companies entering the ecosystem, while Kazakhstan has also held talks with Microsoft and OpenAI. The landscape appears built for that ambition. Nearby lies Bogatyr, one of the world’s largest open-pit coal mines. From the observation deck, terraces of rock descend 300 meters into the earth. Excavators and haul trucks look like toys at the bottom. “Ekibastuz is a very smart choice: energy is abundant and cheap here, while proximity limits transmission losses between the power station and the consumer,” Yevgeny Masternak, CEO of mine operator Bogatyr Komir, told TCA. To keep pace with anticipated demand, the company plans to raise annual production from 42 million tonnes in 2024 to more than 56 million...

Pax Silica

Kazakhstan’s Role in Pax Silica After WAICO

Kazakhstan became the first Central Asian country to join the U.S.-led Pax Silica initiative. It also signed the agreement establishing China’s World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization, or WAICO. That dual participation could now become consequential. Reuters reported on August 14 that the State Department had prepared an undated draft letter warning the 35 signatories of the U.S. AI Opportunity Statement that participation in Pax Silica could be incompatible with membership in competing initiatives. Kazakhstan is the only country presently known to have joined both frameworks. The draft could still change, and the State Department has not publicly adopted the position it contains. Kazakhstan’s decision to join both initiatives also reflects its long-standing multi-vector foreign policy. Astana has sought practical relations with competing powers rather than exclusive alignment with any one bloc, an approach its official foreign-policy concept describes as maintaining mutually beneficial relations with states and organizations of practical interest to Kazakhstan. Joining a U.S.-led supply-chain initiative and a China-led AI organization fits that pattern, although it also makes the question of compatibility more consequential. Washington’s concern is understandable. Pax Silica is intended to create trusted supply chains, strengthen investment security and protect sensitive technology and infrastructure from undue access or control. Membership is meant to represent more than attendance at another diplomatic forum. The question is what Kazakhstan has agreed to do through WAICO, how those commitments will be implemented, and whether they create competing expectations or affect specific Pax Silica projects. Kazakhstan’s Role in the Supply Chain Pax Silica spans the AI supply chain from energy and mineral processing to semiconductors, data centers and models. Kazakhstan also has ambitions in digital infrastructure and AI services, but its strongest existing capabilities relevant to Pax Silica are concentrated in energy, mineral production, selected processing and Eurasian connectivity. The framework is designed to combine the different industrial strengths of its participants rather than reproduce the entire technology chain in every country. Kazakhstan produced about 40% of the world’s mined uranium in 2025. Kazakh-origin material accounted for 28% of uranium delivered to U.S. civilian reactor operators that year, second only to Canada. Kazakhstan’s most immediate relevance is not semiconductor production, but its role as an energy, minerals and processing partner. Uranium is the clearest example, providing large-scale fuel supplies for the power systems on which expanding AI infrastructure depends. As TCA recently noted, Kazakhstan sits at the nexus of resources, processing capacity and connectivity, and its role extends beyond raw-material extraction. Ulba Metallurgical Plant produces uranium dioxide powders and nuclear-fuel pellets, along with beryllium, tantalum and niobium products. Kazakhstan also produces copper, titanium, silver, aluminum and zinc used across power, communications, aerospace and advanced manufacturing. Its position on the Middle Corridor also gives it a logistics role connecting Central Asian production with Caspian and European markets. Other contributions remain prospective. Eurasian Resources Group (ERG) plans a 15-tonne-a-year gallium facility backed by a long-term supply agreement with Mitsubishi, while a U.S.-supported tungsten project is moving forward with plans to mine and refine the...

opinion

Turkmenistan and the New Geopolitics of Silicon

Central Asia is not foreign to the emerging geopolitics of silicon and artificial intelligence (AI). Kazakhstan especially has made itself noticed, joining the US-led Pax Silica initiative in June and the Chinese-led World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization (WAICO) in July. Kazakhstan is the only country participating in both initiatives, which is characteristic of Astana’s multi-vector diplomacy. Whilst other Central Asian states have joined WAICO, Turkmenistan, consistent with its permanent neutrality stance, has joined neither. Neutrality, however, does not prevent economic participation, and a case has to be made for Turkmenistan. Two Frameworks for International Cooperation Although both initiatives respond to the same underlying reality - the growing strategic importance of artificial intelligence - they differ in scope and emphasis. Pax Silica is built around the material and economic foundations of AI, focusing on securing and coordinating the physical supply chains that make computation possible and aiming implicitly to reduce reliance on China. WAICO, by contrast, is centered on the political and normative dimension of AI, prioritizing governance, safety standards, and international coordination, where Beijing could push its rhetoric in favour of open-source artificial intelligence as a model for AI development. Taken together, they reflect two complementary but distinct ways of structuring the emerging AI order: one rooted in industrial capacity and supply-chain control, the other in multilateral rules. On that matter, Turkmenistan's possible relevance does not lie in software, semiconductor fabrication or AI regulation, but much further upstream: silicon metallurgy. From Gas to Silicon Silicon is abundant in nature, but transforming it into industrial materials is an energy-intensive process. Quartz or quartzite is used to produce both silicon ferroalloys and silicon metal. Ferrosilicon is principally consumed by the iron and steel industries, where it serves as a deoxidizing and alloying agent. Silicon metal, meanwhile, is used in aluminum alloys and chemical production, while a small share is further purified into the extremely high-purity silicon required by the semiconductor industry. Ferrosilicon should not be presented as a material that goes directly into AI chips. But establishing competitive ferrosilicon production can constitute a first industrial step into the broader family of silicon metallurgy. And Turkmenistan has already begun considering precisely that. In 2020, the Turkmen authorities reported that the Ministry of Industry was studying the production of metallurgical-grade silicon using local resources. Practical tests had already been conducted using quartz sand, metal mixtures and petroleum coke, while the government presented the development of domestic mineral resources as part of a broader strategy of industrialization and export diversification. The ambition became more concrete in January 2024. Turkmenistan's Ministry of Industry and Construction Production launched an international tender for a feasibility study for a ferroalloy plant intended to manufacture ferrosilicon, silicon carbide, and technical silicon. A 2024 feasibility study for such a project envisions a plant in Balkan Velayat capable of producing 15,000 tons of FeSi75 ferrosilicon annually. The proposed complex would operate two 12,500 kVA furnaces. Rather than depending exclusively on domestic raw materials, the study envisages sourcing quartzite from nearby Iran and...

Data Center Valley

Kazakhstan Sets June 2027 Launch for First Data Center Valley Facility

Kazakhstan expects to launch the first facility at Data Center Valley, a large data center campus in the country’s northeast, in the summer of 2027. The government says the first 50 MW object now under construction is due to enter service in June 2027, while the site is ultimately planned to expand to as much as 1 GW. Earlier plans put the first 125 MW center in the first half of 2027; the latest statement does not explain how the 50 MW object fits into that figure. The project is aimed not only at domestic demand: Kazakhstan wants to attract foreign technology companies and is also exploring the possibility of hosting data belonging to other countries. The first data center is already under construction in the Pavlodar region, one of Kazakhstan’s main energy-producing areas. The main buildings are scheduled to be completed by the end of 2026, with commissioning work to be finished in May and the launch planned for June 2027. A 215 MW substation has been acquired to supply the site with electricity. The choice of region is primarily linked to access to electricity. The Pavlodar region is home to Ekibastuz, one of Kazakhstan’s largest power-generation centers, with a vast coal basin and major power plants. For data centers, particularly GPU clusters used for artificial intelligence, access to large and stable power supplies is critical. The stated 1 GW capacity is a long-term target rather than capacity already under construction. The campus is expected to expand gradually as customers are secured. Plans call for data centers, GPU clusters for AI, and cloud services to be hosted at the site. Among the project’s foreign partners is U.S.-based Firebird AI, which works with NVIDIA technologies. In April 2026, representatives of the two companies held talks in Astana on the development of AI infrastructure, high-performance computing, and data centers. Firebird AI later reached agreements on cooperation within the Data Center Valley project. The Times of Central Asia previously reported on plans to create a large computing facility in Kazakhstan using NVIDIA technologies. Technology companies may not be the only potential clients. The government is also developing the concept of a Data Embassy, which could allow foreign governments to store data in Kazakhstan while retaining legal sovereignty over it. Such a model already exists. Estonia established its data embassy in Luxembourg, where servers remain under Estonian state control and are used to store critical data and help maintain government digital services in the event of cyberattacks or other major crises. The two countries signed an agreement on the data embassy in 2017. Kazakhstan’s Data Embassy concept is still being developed. It is being considered alongside Data Center Valley, but the government has not said that foreign states’ sovereign data would necessarily be stored at the Ekibastuz campus. Data Center Valley itself is intended to host computing capacity and cloud services for international clients. Foreign investor interest in Kazakhstan’s data center market is not limited to this project. Singapore-based GK Hyperscale Ltd plans...

International Olympiad

Astana Hosts Largest International AI Olympiad to Date

More than 500 high school students from 106 countries have gathered in Astana for the third International Olympiad in Artificial Intelligence, making it the largest edition in the event’s three-year history. The competition runs from August 2 to 8. The Olympiad is being held under UNESCO patronage. Astana was selected in March after developments in the Middle East led organizers to relocate the event from Abu Dhabi. The IOAI cited safety, ease of travel, government support, and the experience of the local organizing team among the reasons for choosing Kazakhstan. The main individual competition consists of two six-hour rounds. The first, held on August 4, developed themes introduced in preparatory work completed before the event. A second round on August 6 will present three new problems. Contestants work in Python and primarily use Jupyter Notebook, with medals decided by their combined scores across the two rounds. Before arriving in Astana, students were given a month to work through three educational tasks that did not count toward the final results. One asked them to train a model to guide a delivery robot to a package and then take it to the correct destination while avoiding obstacles. Another was an AI version of Twenty Questions, requiring contestants to identify a hidden animal from roughly 1,400 possibilities using no more than 15 yes-or-no questions. There is also a team robotics competition. After an opening simulation round, the ten highest-scoring teams moved to Alem.ai to adapt and debug their programs ahead of a live final using Galbot robots on August 7. The format tests whether code developed in a simulated environment can work on physical machines. This year’s program also includes a separate AI Models Track. Research laboratories and technology companies can enter AI systems that attempt the same type of machine-learning problems as the students. The systems compete remotely in two six-hour sessions and must write and submit their solutions without human assistance beyond starting or restarting the process. The Olympiad has grown quickly. Its inaugural edition in Burgas, Bulgaria brought together nearly 200 students in 2024. The following year, 310 students from 63 countries and territories competed in Beijing. The Astana field is more than 60% larger than last year’s. Kazakhstan enters the competition with a strong record of its own. Its students won three gold, one silver, and three bronze medals in Beijing last year. The local host is the Competitive Programming Federation of Kazakhstan, which has previously staged the ICPC World Finals and international science olympiads. Opening the event, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said the participants’ work could lead to new solutions in medicine, education, environmental protection, and other fields. He linked the Olympiad to his goal of turning Kazakhstan into a fully digital state within three years and to the designation of 2026 as the Year of Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence. He also acknowledged that the country was only at the beginning of that process. Tokayev noted that Kazakhstan ranks 24th among 193 countries in the United Nations E-Government Development...

Digital Infrastructure

Kazakhstan and China Sign Deals Worth Over $15 Billion During Tokayev’s Shanghai Visit

Kazakhstan and China signed more than 70 commercial agreements worth over $15 billion during President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s working visit to Shanghai on July 16. The package covers artificial intelligence, digital infrastructure, transport, finance, agriculture, vehicle production, and other high-technology industries. The documents were exchanged after a roundtable with Chinese executives. Akorda did not publish a full project-by-project valuation, and the package includes both agreements and memoranda. The headline figure represents the announced value of the documents rather than money already invested or spent. AI and Industrial Projects Among the main documents was a strategic partnership agreement between Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development and Huawei Technologies. The Samruk-Kazyna sovereign wealth fund signed a separate agreement to acquire Huawei technology and equipment. Samruk-Kazyna, Freedom Holding, the Astana city administration, and Geely Auto Group also signed a memorandum on electric-vehicle infrastructure and the use of artificial intelligence in Kazakhstan’s automotive industry. Kazakhtelecom and China’s HV & Submarine Hengtong Group agreed on the basic principles for developing the Data Center Valley project in Ekibastuz. The planned one-gigawatt cluster is intended to combine data centers, cloud services, supercomputing facilities, AI laboratories, research institutions, training programs, and technology startups. Further agreements covered robotics and research. Qazbot Technologies signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Agibot PTE, while the Almaty city administration, NERO Group, and UBTECH Robotics agreed to develop artificial intelligence and robotics in the city. Qazaq AI Research University and the Shanghai Innovation Institute signed a cooperation memorandum. The industrial package includes an agreement between Allur Group and Li Auto to produce Li Auto vehicles in Kazakhstan. Astana Group and Chery Holding signed a technology licensing agreement for OMODA and JAECOO production at the Astana Motors Manufacturing Kazakhstan plant. Qarmet, the Development Bank of Kazakhstan, and a Chinese engineering company also agreed to cooperate on new coke oven batteries and a gas purification system. Transport and Logistics An investment agreement was signed for the first phase of a multifunctional terminal at the Port of Kuryk. Another document covers cooperation on two logistics parks at Khorgos-Eastern Gate, while Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Industry and Construction and NUCTECH agreed to work on inspection systems at border checkpoints and expand local production. Tokayev said around 85% of rail freight between China and Europe passes through Kazakhstan and that the country has invested more than $35 billion in transport and logistics infrastructure over the past 15 years. He also promoted the Smart Cargo platform, which is designed to combine customs, logistics, and commercial services in one digital system. The president also invited Chinese companies to invest in the extraction and deeper processing of critical minerals, agricultural technology, and the development of Alatau City. The government wants the new city to become a regional center for digital finance, asset tokenization, artificial intelligence, and advanced telecommunications. Tokayev said bilateral trade reached a record $49 billion in 2025, cumulative Chinese investment in Kazakhstan exceeded $30 billion, and more than 8,500 companies with Chinese participation operate in the country. Existing joint projects...