Eleveight AI expands Armenia factory after rapid sell-out

Eleveight AI's initial live capacity at its AI Factory in Armenia was fully allocated within a month of launch, and the company has begun expanding the site.

The first live capacity at the Gagarin facility was 1.5MW. The next stage of Phase 1 is under way and is expected to take the site to 5MW by year-end, with a further 35MW planned in Phase 2 for total capacity of 40MW.

Located in Gagarin, Gegharkunik Province, the project is described by Eleveight AI as the first deployment of NVIDIA Blackwell systems in Armenia and the South Caucasus. The site is the first stage of a USD $120 million investment programme, of which USD $70 million has already been deployed.

Demand for AI computing infrastructure has risen as companies, researchers, and public bodies seek local or regional systems that meet data handling and security requirements. Eleveight AI said demand has come from customers in Armenia and international markets.

The site is built around 512 NVIDIA Blackwell B300 graphics processing units across 64 NVIDIA HGX B300 systems. It is intended to support AI training, fine-tuning, inference, generative AI, and machine learning workloads.

Arman Aleksanian, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Eleveight AI, said: "The response has moved faster than we planned for. Our first capacity was taken up within weeks, and we are already building the next phase. It tells us something simple: the demand for sovereign, high-performance AI compute in this region is real, and it is here now. Our job is to scale responsibly and keep Armenia at the centre of where advanced AI gets built."

The site is available through dedicated and shared access models. Eleveight AI added that 20% of total computing capacity has been set aside under partnership terms for Armenian universities, research institutions, and non-commercial initiatives.

Energy and cooling

Eleveight AI said a key factor in the pace of expansion is its ownership of the energy assets supplying the site. According to the company, the facility uses its own solar assets and operates with 100% rack-level air cooling.

The location benefits from about 11 months of free cooling each year because of local altitude and wind conditions at 1,886 metres above sea level, the company said. It reported a power usage effectiveness rating of 1.1 and an effective water usage effectiveness of 0 L/kWh.

Infrastructure at the site includes rotary uninterruptible power supply systems rather than battery-based units, dual power feeds, dedicated transformation and distribution infrastructure, redundant cooling systems, fire suppression, and continuous thermal monitoring. Eleveight AI said the design follows Tier III architectural principles and targets 99.982% uptime.

Regional push

The launch adds to Armenia's efforts to position itself as a technology and semiconductor centre. The opening drew support from senior government figures, including Minister of High-Tech Industry Mkhitar Hayrapetyan and Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.

Mkhitar Hayrapetyan, Minister of High-Tech Industry of the Republic of Armenia, said: "The AI factory lays one of the cornerstones of Armenia's future economy. With this project, Armenia becomes not only a consumer and user of advanced technologies, but also a producer and supplier for the global market."

NVIDIA linked the facility to broader changes in data centre design as artificial intelligence workloads increase. The US chip company has been a central supplier to AI infrastructure projects globally as demand for advanced graphics processors has outstripped supply in many markets.

Rev Lebaredian, Vice President of Physical AI Simulation at NVIDIA, said: "Agentic and physical AI are driving a fundamental redesign of the data center into AI factories built for intelligence at scale. By deploying NVIDIA Blackwell infrastructure in Armenia, Eleveight AI is helping establish the compute foundation for a sovereign AI ecosystem, enabling regional developers and enterprises to build, post-train, and deploy advanced AI models with high performance and efficiency."

The site also includes NVIDIA networking and storage from WEKA and Dell PowerScale. Security measures listed by Eleveight AI include round-the-clock on-site personnel, biometric access controls, surveillance systems, encryption, network segmentation, regular penetration testing, and disaster recovery procedures.

The architecture is designed to support GDPR-aligned data handling, Armenian data residency requirements, and data transfer safeguards for European customers. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said: "What do we see today? Less than a year has passed since that document was signed, but we already have an artificial intelligence center at Yerevan State University, and the first AI factory has already been opened in Gegharkunik Province, in Gagarin."