Armenia buys $25 million in AI computing resources

PanARMENIAN.Net - Armenia plans to acquire $25 million worth of high-performance computing resources to advance its artificial intelligence infrastructure and development of the sector. The relevant proposal has been included on the agenda of the government’s July 16 meeting.

The draft calls for a reallocation within the 2026 state budget and the provision of 957.9 million drams, or about $2.6 million, to the Ministry of High-Tech Industry. The funds will be used to purchase high-performance computing resources in the artificial intelligence sector, specifically graphics processing unit capacity, Factor.am reports.

The initiative will be implemented as part of efforts to establish a strategically important artificial intelligence factory in Armenia. The services are to be purchased from Firebird AI CJSC, with which the Ministry of High-Tech Industry signed a contract on April 17, 2026.

The government will acquire $25 million in high-performance computing resources from Firebird AI for a five-year period. The program envisages the purchase of 181 GPU/hour resources.

Under the proposal, 957.9 million drams will be reallocated from the High-Tech Industry Ministry’s state support program for organizations operating in the information technology sector. The funding will instead go to a new measure titled “Acquisition of high-performance computing resources/graphics processing unit capacity in the field of artificial intelligence.”

According to the ministry’s explanatory note, the program aims to establish a modern artificial intelligence data center in Armenia based on Nvidia’s advanced technological solutions. The facility will provide high-performance computing resources for designing, training and deploying artificial intelligence systems.

The computing capacity is expected to be made available not only to government bodies but also to research centers, universities, startups, specialists and other beneficiaries.

At the same time, Armenia’s Finance Ministry submitted several comments on the proposal. The ministry noted that the planned reallocation of 957.9 million drams exceeded the 2% ceiling set for programs of the High-Tech Industry Ministry. Including previous reallocations, the figure reached about 4.1%.

One of the Finance Ministry’s proposals also concerned the program’s performance indicators. The ministry said that merely specifying the “number of contracts signed” did not adequately reflect the program’s actual outcome because it failed to show the volume of computing capacity being acquired.

According to the authors of the proposal, the comments were accepted and corresponding changes were made to the document.

The explanatory note states that adoption of the program will not create additional expenditure for the state budget because the funding will be reallocated from resources that have already been approved.

Firebird AI is an artificial intelligence cloud and infrastructure company that provides large-scale GPU computing resources for training and deploying advanced AI models and conducting scientific research.

The company plans to launch the Caucasus region’s first and largest artificial intelligence supercomputer in 2026, powered by U.S.-based Nvidia’s Blackwell graphics processing units.