Jensen Huang used his first visit to Kazakhstan to make a very physical case for AI: the country has land, energy and, if its plans materialise, a lot more computing capacity. At a discussion in Astana with Kazakhstan Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development Zhaslan Madiyev, the Nvidia chief executive said Kazakhstan could become “a computing hub” and “AI factory hub” for Europe, according to Euronews.
The pitch rested less on software glamour than on power infrastructure. Madiyev said Kazakhstan plans to raise installed power capacity to more than 40 gigawatts by 2035, nearly doubling it, as the country expands the systems needed for its AI sector.
That does not make Kazakhstan an AI hub. It does explain why Huang was talking about one.
A flagship project is the Data Center Valley in Ekibastuz, one of Kazakhstan’s main power-generating centres. Euronews reported that its first 50-megawatt phase is expected to begin operations in 2027, while the project’s energy infrastructure could eventually scale to one gigawatt. Huang’s formulation was cleaner than most state tech campaigns: rather than exporting energy as energy, Kazakhstan could “transform the energy into intelligence and export intelligence.”
There is a real industrial argument inside that line. AI infrastructure is not abstract. It is electricity, cooling, land and large capital projects. Huang said Kazakhstan has “a lot of real estate” and “a lot of energy,” and he treated those basics as an advantage rather than a backdrop.
He also pressed a second theme that governments increasingly like hearing from chip executives: control. When Madiyev said Kazakhstan is developing Kazakh-language large language models based on open-source foundation models and asked whether the country should eventually build its own foundation model from scratch, Huang said that “makes complete sense” and described it as a national security issue. In his telling, countries will need their own “intelligence grid” much as they have their own electric grid, internet and telecommunications.
That is a bigger claim than a datacentre announcement, and also a more fashionable one. But it fits the rest of the conversation, which kept circling back to national infrastructure rather than consumer AI spectacle.
Kazakhstan also tried to widen the story beyond servers. Madiyev pointed to mining, agriculture, transport and logistics as possible ground for “Physical AI,” and Huang called that idea “fantastic,” saying such sectors could be early beneficiaries. He mentioned uses ranging from seismic understanding to mapping mines and wells, geology and chemical processing. For a country with an industrial base, that part of the discussion sounded less like branding and more like an attempt to connect AI to the work already being done.
The visit included a mention of Higgsfield AI, a Kazakh-founded generative video startup in which Nvidia has invested. Huang said the attraction came down to the founders, whom he described as “visionary,” and he noted the company’s presence in both Kazakhstan and the United States.
Later in the day, Huang met President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, who called artificial intelligence and digitalisation a national priority and said the visit would give a “serious boost” to cooperation with Nvidia. Huang, for his part, said Kazakhstan had the potential to become a global hub for Physical AI.
Gabriel Fenech 
Alex de Valletta 
Dua Mifsud