Armenia expects to become one of the largest artificial intelligence infrastructure hubs in Europe, Bloomberg writes. The Firebird site is located 45 km from Yerevan; by the end of 2027, its capacity should reach 300 megawatts, and the number of the latest Nvidia chips should exceed 70,000.
The main capacity is intended for foreign companies, including the American Perplexity AI. About one-fifth of the computing resources is reserved for local projects and government agencies.
The office of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said that the agreements signed in Washington last year in the fields of semiconductors and artificial intelligence became “peace dividends” for Armenia. The project is also linked to negotiations on resolving the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
In 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump’s team allowed the export of Nvidia chips to support these negotiations. Armenia’s cooperation with Nvidia began in 2019, when Pashinyan visited the company’s office in Santa Clara.
In 2022, Nvidia opened a representative office in Armenia and in February of that same year transferred engineers there from Moscow. A year later, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang visited the country, and a company representative said that Armenia has outstanding technical talent and a dynamic, growing innovation ecosystem.
Armenia State University received export licenses for 64 flagship Nvidia H100 accelerators to create the largest supercomputer in the region at that time. Firebird CEO Razmig Ovakimyan said that Huang’s visit helped lay the foundation for the project.
Amid rapprochement with the U.S., Yerevan began distancing itself from Moscow: Armenia accused Russia of failing to fulfill its obligations under the defense agreement within the CSTO and of being unable to prevent Azerbaijan’s invasion of Nagorno-Karabakh. In early 2023, Pashinyan tightened restrictions on electronics exports to Russia, saying the country could not afford to fall under Western sanctions.
Since May of this year, Moscow has been steadily banning shipments of various Armenian products, including alcohol, vegetables, fruit, fish, milk, and flowers. The first Russian bans on the import and transit of Armenian goods appeared shortly before the parliamentary elections in the republic, held on June 7, and after Pashinyan’s party won and Yerevan decided to apply for EU membership, their number increased sharply; in the first six months of 2026, Armenia increased exports to EU countries by 80% — to $516 million from $287 million a year earlier, the republic’s government said.
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