Karakalpakstan Data Centers Attract Investor Group

Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.uz) — Uzbekistan has formed a significant pool of investors interested in constructing data centers in Karakalpakstan, an official from the Presidential Administration announced at the Silk Road Finance & Technology Forum in Tashkent on 24 August 2026.

Bobur Khodjaev, head of the Department for Financial Technologies, Digitalization, and Artificial Intelligence, said Uzbekistan intends to expand its domestic artificial intelligence infrastructure while attracting foreign investment and utilizing international technologies.

Khodjaev noted that Uzbekistan is seeking access to both American and Chinese artificial intelligence ecosystems. He stated that U.S. technology firms offer advanced AI chips and proprietary models, while Chinese developers provide open-weight models that are significantly cheaper than their American equivalents.

Concurrently, the country is scaling up its domestic computing infrastructure. Last month, Uzbekistan commissioned its first large supercomputer at the Digital Government Data Center, with plans to triple its capacity over the next 12 months.

Work is also underway on sovereign AI models intended for deployment across education, healthcare, public services, and finance.

To attract private capital into digital infrastructure, authorities introduced tax incentives and special electricity tariffs last year for investors building data centers in Karakalpakstan. Khodjaev confirmed that these measures have successfully generated a substantial pool of prospective investors for the region.

Additionally, Uzbekistan is establishing Enterprise Uzbekistan, a special zone that will offer common-law legal frameworks and tax preferences to attract international technology companies. Khodjaev emphasized that the country remains open to cooperation with all interested global partners as it seeks to deploy artificial intelligence across all sectors of its economy.