Uzbekistan offers startups 10 million free LLM tokens a month on state GPUs

Uzbekistan's Cabinet of Ministers has opened the Ministry of Digital Technologies' computing cluster to universities, research organisations and startups under Resolution No. 581 of 20 October. Free access covers up to 10 million large language model tokens a month for up to six months.

Access is for socially important projects. Advisers to regional governors on digital technology can also use the cluster, and startups qualify if they belong to the Digital Startups programme defined in a presidential resolution of 14 October 2024. The resolution entered into force on 21 October, the day the ministry announced the rules.

The resolution approves a regulation on free or preferential use of what it calls the ministry's artificial intelligence infrastructure: a high-performance computing cluster built on graphics processing units (GPUs) and a specialised big data database, provided through the state Centre for the Development of Artificial Intelligence and the Digital Economy, which operates under the ministry. Neither the resolution nor the ministry's release says how many GPUs the cluster has, of what type, or what the database contains.

What the regulation offers

• Language models: up to 10 million tokens per calendar month through an application programming interface (API), free for up to six months, counting tokens in requests and responses unless the Centre's technical conditions say otherwise. Up to 50 million further tokens are charged at tariffs the ministry approves, with a 50 per cent discount, and unused tokens do not carry over to later months.
• Use of language models is limited to inference, testing, validation, evaluation and preparing analytical information, so training a language model is not among the permitted uses.
• Other AI models: up to 120 GB of GPU video memory in total, for up to six months, for training, fine-tuning, testing, validation, evaluation and inference.
• Data from the big data database is free within the Centre's security requirements, but users may not pass it to third parties, copy, distribute or use it commercially unless the law or a contract provides otherwise.
• Each user may run one project at a time, and may enter a later round with a new project only after the usage period ends and the Centre accepts its final report.

Users may not use the infrastructure for cryptocurrency mining, malware, unauthorised access, spam, phishing or illegal content, and the Centre may warn them, restrict their access temporarily, or suspend or cancel it.

How projects are chosen

Preferential access goes to projects chosen in a contest held twice a year. Under the schedule annexed to the regulation, the Centre announces each round at the start of June and October, an expert commission scores the applications within 15 working days of the deadline, and the coordination commission for the Digital Uzbekistan 2030 strategy names the winners in July and November. Applications are scored out of 100: up to 20 points each for expected results and the efficient use of resources, and up to 10 each for social importance, efficiency, innovation, technical justification, security and data handling, and compliance with AI ethics rules. Projects must also comply with the ethics rules for AI-based solutions that the minister of digital technologies approved on 14 March 2026. Ties go to the applicant with more points for resource efficiency and expected results. Applicants may appeal within three working days to a commission of at least five specialists, which rules within five working days.

Prices and money still to come

The resolution gives the ministry two months to approve tariffs for the infrastructure, so the price of use beyond the free tier, and the base for the 50 per cent discount, had not been set when it was adopted. It also records that state bodies and companies receiving money from the Fund for Reconstruction and Development for AI projects, as interest-free credit under a presidential decree of 22 October 2025, must repay it in full to the Fund for the Development of Digital Technologies within five years of implementing their projects, under financing agreements with that fund and the Centre. It gives no amounts for those allocations.

The rules add a state route to computing capacity alongside projects Corridor Signal has reported, from a proposed regional computing network to Uztelecom's new data centres in Bukhara and Kokand. A day after announcing them, the ministry publicised a survey by IT Park Uzbekistan and the Khan Tengri Innovation Hub, run with Alibaba Cloud, of startups' need for AI tokens and cloud service credits; it gives no volumes or values.

The next dated step is the tariff decision, due within two months of 20 October. The schedule puts announcements at the start of June and October; the resolution took effect on 21 October, and neither it nor the ministry's release says when the first round will open.