Firebird opens first phase of $4 billion AI project

By Paul Vartan Sookiasian 

Firebird opened its AI factory in the central Armenian town of Hrazdan on Saturday, launching the $500 million first phase of a project that the company says could ultimately involve $4 billion in investment in Armenia. 

The facility uses NVIDIA computing technology and Dell Technologies infrastructure, with both companies serving as major technology partners. It is being presented as the largest AI factory in the Commonwealth of Independent States region. Starting with an initial 6,144 NVIDIA GPUs, Firebird plans to expand the Armenian operation to more than 70,000 NVIDIA Blackwell and Vera Rubin GPUs and 300 megawatts of AI infrastructure capacity by the end of 2027. 

The project has moved at remarkable speed. Firebird announced Phase One, a $500 million public-private partnership investment, in June 2025. A second phase was unveiled in February during U.S. Vice President JD Vance’s visit to Armenia, bringing the planned total investment to $4 billion, with completion set for the end of this year.

The facility was constructed in just over six months, with Firebird executives crediting the Armenian government with helping accelerate the project. 

“Projects like this usually die quietly in the gap between ambition and the permit,” Firebird co-founder Alexander Yesayan, chairman of Team Group, an Armenian telecommunications and technology company, said at the opening. 

The government has provided institutional and financial support for the project, including customs-duty exemptions for eligible imported equipment, measures to expedite the permitting process and a $25 million agreement to purchase high-performance computing resources from Firebird over five years. Building Armenia's AI infrastructure 

The significance of the project extends beyond the facility itself. In a video address at the opening, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang said AI infrastructure is becoming as fundamental to the economy as electricity and the internet have been to previous technological transformations. 

“Every company and every country must build its own AI; no nation can outsource all of its intelligence,” Huang said. 

The facility is primarily intended to serve international customers, while Firebird says it will also support Armenia's domestic AI ecosystem through investment and computing access for startups. 

NVIDIA executive Rev Lebaredian said the project gives Armenia an opportunity to participate in the emerging AI economy rather than simply consume technology developed elsewhere. 

“Building such a thing and having existence proof of the first one shows the world, and more importantly, shows ourselves what we are capable of,” Lebaredian said. “We can be on the frontier of technology, on the frontier of the global economy.” 

Questions over environmental impact 

The project's rapid development has also raised questions about environmental and public oversight, with no public reports of an environmental impact assessment or public hearings on the project. However AI data centers are not explicitly included among projects subject to Armenia's environmental impact assessment law, meaning such reviews may not have been legally required. 

The project has also faced criticism online, reflecting a wider backlash against the rapid expansion of AI data centers worldwide. Concerns have centered on the amount of electricity and water data centers consume, as well as noise and potential strain on local infrastructure. Some of the criticism surrounding Firebird, however, appears to be based on assumptions about data centers generally rather than the specific technology being deployed in Hrazdan. 

One example is water consumption. Armenia's High-Tech Ministry says the facility uses a closed-loop cooling system, in which the same coolant is circulated rather than continuously consumed. The ministry says the system requires a water change only once every few years. 

The factory also does not contain the large evaporative cooling towers used at some conventional data centers, which can generate significant mechanical noise. Firebird's cooling system still involves mechanical equipment, however, so the facility is not necessarily free of operational noise. 

The larger infrastructure question is electricity. Firebird's planned 300 megawatts of Armenian capacity would represent a substantial industrial electricity load, making the availability, cost and source of that electricity important questions as the project expands. 

A project tied to the Armenia–U.S. relationship

Speaking at the opening, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan tied the factory directly to the August 2025 White House summit, saying the AI memorandum signed there had produced a tangible result. He described August 8 as a “turning point” for Armenia and said the peace process was taking the country’s economic and investment environment to another level.

U.S. Embassy Chargé d’Affaires David Allen described the factory as a direct result of the summit, pointing specifically to the memorandum of understanding on AI infrastructure signed there by U.S. President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.

“We talk a lot about the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity, but we talk less about the three memoranda of understanding that the Prime Minister and the President signed, including one on AI infrastructure,” Allen said. 

Lebaredian also framed Firebird as part of a broader regional network, saying Armenia could become a connector between Central Asian resources and European markets as regional connectivity improves. That vision extends to Kazakhstan, Firebird's second market after Armenia, where a 125-megawatt facility is being developed at the Data Center Valley in Ekibastuz under agreements worth $10 billion signed in June. Kazakhstan's Deputy Prime Minister of Artificial Intelligence Zhaslan Madiyev attended the opening. 

With the Hrazdan facility now operational, Firebird has put the first phase of its planned Armenian expansion into operation, establishing the base for the larger computing network the company plans to build across Armenia and the region.