NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA) said AI infrastructure company Firebird has secured a U.S. export license for 45,000 NVIDIA Grace Blackwell GPUs, to be used in a planned buildout in Kazakhstan.

The detail came in an NVIDIA blog post dated October 22, as chief executive Jensen Huang visited Astana. Firebird signed an investment agreement with the government of Kazakhstan at the Akorda Presidential Palace, where Huang met President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev on Friday, October 23.

The post gives no dollar value for the agreement. It also lists no other terms of the license.

Two phases and about 500 megawatts

Firebird, which built its first AI factory in Armenia, is building phase one with Kazakhtelecom at a site called Data Center Valley. NVIDIA said that phase targets a commercial launch in the third quarter of 2027.

A planned second phase would lift Firebird's total potential AI infrastructure capacity in the country to about 500 megawatts, according to the post. Firebird also plans a Firebird Labs Kazakhstan unit to fund local startups and give researchers access to compute.

Firebird cofounder and chief executive Razmig Hovaghimian said the project began as an idea 180 days ago, NVIDIA wrote.

The license next to today's installed base

Kazakhtelecom, the country's largest telecom company, already runs 400 NVIDIA H200 GPUs and 480 B300 GPUs in Astana and Almaty, the post said. That is 880 chips in all.

The licensed Firebird volume is about 51 times that installed base, as calculated by Trend & Ticker.

For 2027, Kazakhtelecom plans more than 1,000 GPUs in Data Center Valley and more than 1,000 Vera Rubin GPUs in the Ekibastuz region.

A startup stake and a pitch on data

NVIDIA also announced an investment in Higgsfield AI, a generative media startup founded in Kazakhstan. It did not disclose the size of the stake. The startup is adding Vera Rubin capacity through outside cloud providers, the post said.

At a public fireside chat at the Alem.AI center, Huang sat with Deputy Prime Minister Zhaslan Madiyev, who is also the minister of AI and digital development. Madiyev said Kazakhstan is after AI that works in the Kazakh language and reflects local culture.

Huang framed local data as a national asset. "Your country's data is your natural resource. It belongs to you," he said, according to the blog.

The post does not say which U.S. agency granted the license or when the first of the 45,000 chips will ship. The Data Center Valley launch in the third quarter of 2027 is the first dated milestone.