Armenia launched the first phase of the Firebird AI center near Razdan in August 2026. According to the republic's government, $500 million was invested in the project, more than 6,000 Nvidia Blackwell processors were installed, and a computing infrastructure with a capacity of 18 megawatts was created. As BeInCrypto reports, the launch was made possible by a US export license included in the negotiation package for the peace settlement between Yerevan and Baku. Washington authorized the additional export of 41,000 Nvidia GB300 chips — among the company's most powerful accelerators for artificial intelligence tasks.
Initially, Firebird received a license for approximately 6,000 processors. Following the Washington agreement, US authorities approved an expansion of supplies. The project itself does not involve independent manufacturing of Nvidia chips in Armenia, but the import authorization opened the door to building a powerful infrastructure for machine learning and data processing. According to The Wall Street Journal, Washington used access to advanced Nvidia processors as one of the incentives to accelerate the preliminary agreement between Yerevan and Baku. In the American side's assessment, Armenian President Nikol Pashinyan needed tangible economic results from the peace process to offset the domestic political costs of the agreement. Permission to import advanced processors for the Firebird project was included in the negotiation package for precisely this reason.
The scale of the center's development extends far beyond the initial phase. Future investment is planned to exceed $4 billion, and the number of processors is targeted to surpass 100,000 units by the end of 2027. The complex's energy base is also growing: infrastructure capacity will be increased from the current 18 to more than 400 megawatts. This reserve is necessary to power and cool tens of thousands of accelerators operating under constant load. The launch of the center near Razdan makes Armenia home to one of the largest computing facilities in the South Caucasus. Infrastructure of this class opens opportunities for the development and training of large-scale artificial intelligence models directly within the country. The project's name itself is symbolic — Firebird, evoking the image of the mythical Zhar-Ptitsa. Behind it lies a thoroughly practical goal: to transform an export permit into a functioning industrial facility with thousands of accelerators. For comparison, the strategic partnership charter signed between Azerbaijan and the US in February 2026 provides for the creation of AI data centers in that country, but the document specifies no particular companies, investment volumes, equipment quantities, or timelines. Thus, the Armenian portion of the technology package has already materialized into a measurable result: a license has been issued, thousands of processors have been installed, and the first phase worth $500 million has been launched. Further development of the complex will determine how much of the stated plans can be realized in practice.