Uzbekistan to allocate $70 million to expand AI computing capacity
The government of Uzbekistan will allocate an additional $70 million to expand infrastructure for artificial intelligence projects. The funds will go toward upgrading the existing supercomputer cluster and building new data centers, including facilities in Karakalpakstan.
Plans to scale computing resources were announced during a presentation to President Shavkat Mirziyoyev on August 7. The meeting covered the results of the infrastructure’s first phase and tasks for building an AI ecosystem.
Currently, the Digital Government data center operates a supercomputer complex based on technologies from the American company NVIDIA. Its creation cost $24 million. The system ranked 321st globally in computing power. During its first month of operation, the load on the cluster reached 90%. This high utilization rate confirmed the demand for heavy computing from both government agencies and commercial projects.
Hardware development is accompanied by data quality requirements. Ministries and agencies have been instructed to conduct a full inventory of databases, verify their accuracy, and ensure integration between systems. The goal is to create clean industry datasets for training AI solutions.
Country and market
Uzbekistan is actively digitizing its government services and financial sector. Creating a centralized computing infrastructure gives local companies access to capacities that are difficult and expensive to deploy independently. For the Central Asian fintech market, this means accelerating the development cycle for products relying on machine learning and big data processing.
Why it matters
The development of state computing capacities directly affects the financial sector. Banks, payment systems, and microfinance organizations depend on data processing speeds when evaluating borrowers, processing payments, and verifying clients.
Localizing computing power removes some barriers for banks and fintechs, allowing them to train anti-fraud and scoring models on domestic servers without violating data storage requirements.
Inventorying and cleaning government databases will also simplify operations for fintech companies. Integrating high-quality datasets via the digital government API will improve the accuracy of digital identification (KYC) and supervisory systems (RegTech).
What’s next
In the near future, the government plans to attract foreign partners to design and launch new data centers. Simultaneously, AI implementation will begin in specific economic sectors. The first large-scale example will be the water management system: starting in September, Uzbekistan is launching a unified electronic platform to monitor water infrastructure, and the relevant department will appoint a dedicated executive for digitalization and AI.