The United States has approved the export of Nvidia Blackwell processors to Armenia for construction of a 100-megawatt AI supercomputing center, to be built and operated by US-registered company Firebird. The facility, expected to come online in Q2 2026, will be the first of its kind in the South Caucasus. Eighty percent of its computing capacity is contracted to US firms, with the remaining twenty percent reserved for Armenian entities.
The facility sits alongside a broader package of cloud cooperation agreements between Armenian entities and Amazon.
Taken together, these initiatives are designed to position Armenia as a Western-aligned technology hub in the South Caucasus, and to do so at a moment when Yerevan is actively recalibrating its relationship with Moscow.
However, Nima Khorrami, an analyst at the consulting firm NSSG who specializes in Iran and the South Caucasus, writes in The National Interest that the question remains: has Washington sufficiently taken into account the political environment in which this infrastructure will operate?
The deal coincides with Armenia’s June parliamentary elections, whose outcome could significantly affect the facility’s operating environment.
Moreover, the Armenian government’s earlier move to revoke and nationalize Electric Networks of Armenia (ENA) under constitutional provisions is also cited as a precedent showing how strategic infrastructure could be brought under state control without overt expropriation.
Russia retains additional leverage that amplifies these concerns. Armenia remains dependent on Russian energy supplies, grain, and transit infrastructure. Russia also maintains a military base at Gyumri. In a scenario of heightened pressure, legal mechanisms framed under national-security provisions could be deployed to justify forced partnerships or compelled data access.
To be sure, this is not a high-probability scenario, but it is within the range of plausible contingencies that serious risk planning should address.
Moscow’s formal and informal commercial presence in segments of Armenia’s economy, combined with established smuggling networks, also means that the possibility of advanced chips being redirected cannot be dismissed as implausible.
