Armenia’s Role in Global Data Infrastructure: A Strategic Opportunity for the Next Decade

Around the world, demand for high-performance computing, sovereign cloud capacity, and AI-ready infrastructure is accelerating to levels unseen in the last three decades. According to Goldman Sachs (2024), global data center power consumption is expected to grow by 165% by 2030, driven primarily by AI training and inference workloads.

At the same time, large technology ecosystems are actively searching for new, geopolitically stable, energy-efficient, and talent-dense regions for expanding compute capacity.

This global shift opens a rare strategic window for Armenia, a country increasingly demonstrating the conditions necessary to become a rising hub for regional and global data infrastructure.

1. Armenia’s Strategic Geography

Although global AI infrastructure is expanding rapidly, large portions of the surrounding region remain significantly under-served. The South Caucasus, Middle East, and much of Central Asia lack sufficient high-density compute capacity relative to the demand being generated by governments, enterprises, and emerging AI ecosystems. This imbalance is now driving a shift toward new geographies, places that can offer stability, engineering talent, and favourable operating conditions.

Global consulting reports underline that:

• Demand for AI-ready data centre capacity is expected to grow at around 33% per year between 2023 and 2030, with AI-capable sites representing roughly 70% of total data centre demand by 2030. (McKinsey, 2024)

• Meeting this demand requires new sites and new geographies, not only expansion in existing hubs. (PwC, 2025)

Armenia’s geographic position enables connectivity across Eastern Europe, Central Asia, the Middle East, and the post-Soviet markets. This creates an opportunity for Armenia to serve as a multi-regional node for AI workloads where proximity and latency optimization matter.

2. Rising National Momentum and Regulatory Progress

A series of developments in 2024–2025 signaled growing national commitment to digital transformation. Notably, the Armenian ecosystem saw:

• Approval for importing NVIDIA AI chips, enabling deployment of next-generation GPU clusters (Bloomberg, 2025)

• In June 2025, Armenia announced a $500 million, 100-megawatt AI data centre project in partnership with Firebird Inc. and NVIDIA (Enterprise Armenia, 2025)

• Several privately-led data infrastructure investments

• Heightened government focus on innovation, AI policy, and regional competitiveness

These developments align with the broader European agenda of strengthening compute capacity and talent pipelines (European Commission, 2024). Armenia, while not an EU member, is well-positioned to align with these regional goals through partnerships, near-shore compute, and engineering export.

3. Deep Talent Advantage: Armenia’s Human Capital as a Competitive Edge

Armenia’s most powerful asset is its human capital.

The World Bank’s report in 2020, “Realizing Armenia’s High-Tech Potential”, notes that Armenia has a strong comparative advantage in mathematics and natural sciences, and that with the right investments, the country could become a global hub for pure AI research and machine learning thanks to its deep mathematical tradition.

An analysis on EVN Report on AI policy for Armenia emphasizes that this combination of high education levels and technology-focused population gives Armenia “the potential to become a global leader in machine learning.” (EVN Report, 2025)

This talent base is directly relevant for:

• Designing and operating modern AI data centres

• Managing GPU-dense clusters and high-performance networks

• Developing applied AI products that can sit on top of local infrastructure

4. Climate & Energy: Sustainability and Strategic Advantage

Cooling and energy are among the biggest challenges for next-generation AI data centres.

The IEA estimates that data centres already account for around 1.5% of global electricity use, and that their electricity consumption could more than double by 2030, driven largely by AI workloads (IEA,2025).

For investors and operators, this makes site selection including climate and access to energy critical.

A 2025 article on an Eastern European AI data centre notes that Armenia’s data centre market is growing rapidly, “spurred by advantages inherent to its climate and supported by both government and finance,” with natural cooling highlighted as a sustainability lever (DataCenterKnowledge, 2025).

5. National Agency in the AI Era: How Small Nations Shape Big Futures

We are living through what many call the new industrial revolution powered by compute, data, and models. In this new era small, agile nations, not just superpowers, can carve out strategic niches. And success depends not just on resources or geography, but on clarity of vision, institutional coherence, and the ability to mobilize talent, diaspora, and global partnerships.

Armenia, with its engineering depth, diaspora network, and growing local ecosystem, can choose whether to be shaped by AI, or to shape it. This idea of agency is crucial as Armenia is positioned as such to decide whether to be a consumer of AI built elsewhere, or to become a producer of AI technologies from within the region.

6. Private-Sector Leadership: Eleveight AI’s Role

Amid this growing national and global momentum, Eleveight AI emerges not just as a data-center operator, but as a strategic enabler of Armenia’s AI identity and sovereignty.

By combining advanced compute infrastructure with ecosystem-building (talent programs, collaboration with academia, regional partnerships), Eleveight helps to ensure that Armenia’s role in global data infrastructure is locally owned and governed, as well as talent-rich and innovation-driven through enabling research, startups, applied AI and global partnerships.

Conclusion: Armenia’s Window of Opportunity

As global compute demand accelerates and infrastructure decentralizes, Armenia stands at a pivotal moment.

If Armenia invests strategically, in infrastructure, talent, governance and ecosystem building it can transform from a consumer of global AI to a producer, exporter, and shaper of AI capabilities.

Eleveight AI is committed to helping accelerate this future by building world-class infrastructure and community, enabling sovereign AI development, and nurturing the next generation of regional talent.

Therefore Armenia is no longer a peripheral player, it is a strategic location for the next wave of AI infrastructure.