Nvidia says Firebird has a US export licence for 45,000 GPUs for Kazakhstan

Firebird has secured a US export licence for 45,000 Nvidia Grace Blackwell GPUs for its expansion into Kazakhstan, Nvidia said in a blog post on the 23 October visit to Astana by its founder and chief executive, Jensen Huang.

The post says the visit coincided with a signing ceremony at the presidential palace for Firebird's investment agreement with the government of Kazakhstan. It gives no licence number, issuing agency or conditions, and no value or terms for the agreement. Neither document is public in the material reviewed for this piece.

According to the post, the first phase of Firebird's Kazakh project is under construction with Kazakhtelecom at Data Center Valley, targeting commercial launch in the third quarter of 2027, and a planned second phase would bring Firebird's total potential AI infrastructure capacity in Kazakhstan to approximately 500 MW. That is four times the 125 MW at which a 6 October report by Capacity put the first phase of the Firebird programme, and above the 300 MW of power that the government said in June was available there, as Corridor Signal has reported. The post does not say whether the 500 MW is power at the site or IT load, or when the second phase would start.

The post also gives figures for Kazakhtelecom, which it describes as the country's largest telecommunications company. The operator has deployed 400 Nvidia H200 and 480 Nvidia B300 GPUs in Astana and Almaty. Next year it plans to deploy more than 1,000 GPUs in Data Center Valley and more than 1,000 Nvidia Vera Rubin GPUs in the Ekibastuz region. The post does not say how the installed GPUs divide between the two cities, which model the Data Center Valley batch would use, or whether either batch is part of Firebird's capacity.

What the presidency recorded

The presidency's account of President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev's meeting with Huang at the Akorda names the partners but not the deal. It quotes Huang as citing partnerships with Firebird AI KZ Ltd and Kazakhtelecom, and as saying that "this new industry requires energy at its foundation". It records his proposal that Kazakhstan become a global hub for physical AI, and says Tokayev awarded him the Order of Dostyk of the first degree for his contribution to AI development in Kazakhstan. It does not mention the Firebird signing, an export licence or any capacity or investment figure.

At a public fireside chat with Zhaslan Madiyev, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development, Huang said the country could "transform energy into intelligence and export intelligence", Nvidia's post reported. Tokayev also welcomed Nvidia's partnership with Higgsfield, a Kazakhstan-founded start-up in which Nvidia announced an investment during the visit, without giving an amount.

Madiyev's ministry, as reported by El.kz, said Data Center Valley is planned in phases to a total power capacity of up to 1 GW and that the full 215 MW of its first phase is already reserved. It did not say who holds the reservation or how it relates to Firebird's first phase. Nationally, the government plans to commission 186 MW of data centre capacity in 2027 and a further 109 MW in the second quarter of 2028, as reported earlier.

Other compute plans

Timur Turlov, chief executive of Freedom Holding, said the company was placing an order for its first Nvidia B300 computing cluster, with a public GPU cloud for businesses and developers planned for 2027, The Times of Central Asia reported. The publication said Freedom is building the Akashi data centre campus in Astana with a planned capacity of up to 100 MW, and that Freedom's August regulatory filing described its $2 billion sovereign AI hub arrangement with the ministry as non-binding and said the project would require substantial financing. It also reported that Firebird's Kazakh unit would finance the computing hardware and related systems.

Nvidia's post names Firebird as the holder of the licence. None of the documents from the visit says which end users the licence covers or what conditions attach to it. Firebird already runs an AI factory on Nvidia B200 GPUs in Armenia, which it said on 12 October meets at least 95 per cent of Nvidia's reference performance for the training workloads evaluated, as Corridor Signal has reported.

The next dated step in the documents is the commercial launch of Firebird's first phase in the third quarter of 2027. Kazakhtelecom's plan to deploy more than 2,000 GPUs in and around Ekibastuz is set for next year, by Nvidia's account, while the licence conditions and the terms of the investment agreement remain unpublished.