Uzbekistan secures $6B in data-centre commitments for AI infrastructure

Uzbekistan has locked in over $6 billion in private investment commitments to build out artificial intelligence infrastructure by the end of the decade. The agreements, announced at a technology event in Tashkent, represent one of the largest AI infrastructure plays in Central Asia and signal the country’s ambitions to become a regional hub for compute-intensive workloads. First Deputy Minister of Digital Technologies Oleg Pekos outlined plans to deploy 800 megawatts of new computing power. For context, a single hyperscale data center typically runs on 50 to 100 MW. Why the urgency Existing computing facilities in the country are running at nearly 90% utilization, meaning there is almost no headroom for new workloads, let alone the surge in demand that AI applications tend to create. The first wave of new capacity is expected to come online in November 2026, with additional facilities slated for completion by the end of that year. Among the anchor projects driving this expansion is TAS-1, a data center being developed by Saudi-backed DataVolt inside Tashkent’s IT Park. The facility will start with an initial capacity of 12 MW and is designed for AI workloads, incorporating advanced...