NVIDIA-backed AI cloud Firebird officially opened the CIS region's largest AI factory in Hrazdan, Armenia on August 8, 2026, alongside Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang and senior officials from Armenia, Kazakhstan and the United States.
NVIDIA DSX, delivered in six months
The facility is built on the NVIDIA DSX AI Factory reference design, interconnected with NVIDIA Spectrum-X Ethernet and Dell PowerEdge servers. Firebird plans to scale it to more than 70,000 NVIDIA Rubin and Blackwell GPUs and 300 megawatts of capacity by the end of 2027, positioning the buildout among Europe's largest AI-infrastructure programs. NVIDIA says the DSX design packs up to 40% more GPUs into the same footprint than legacy layouts.
NVIDIA and CoreWeave invest
Firebird also revealed that NVIDIA intends to invest in the company, following an earlier CoreWeave check earlier in 2026. Co-founder Razmig Hovaghimian said Firebird is targeting roughly "2 GWs of capacity" globally within two years across Armenia, Kazakhstan and "additional frontier markets." Kazakhstan is already Firebird's second market, with 125 MW secured at Data Center Valley and U.S. Bureau of Industry and Security export authorization in hand.
Perplexity anchors early demand
Perplexity is one of Firebird's first announced customers, using the Armenia site to power its answer engine and AI "digital coworker" platform. Schneider Electric supplied medium- and low-voltage switchgear, three-phase UPS and rack enclosures, while Vertiv delivered a chilled-water cooling architecture coordinated by its iCOM CWM manager. Combined with recent activity from Samsung and hyperscalers, Firebird's rollout is a fresh datapoint that sovereign AI infrastructure is spreading well beyond the U.S. and China.
Reporting based on coverage from NVIDIA's newsroom, Firebird's press release and TechCrunch coverage of Armenian AI policy.