The Eurasian Development Bank (EDB) signed an agreement in Astana on 19 October to lend $31.2 million to AKASHI Data Center PLC for a data center under construction in the capital. The bank says it is the first data center construction project in its portfolio.
The campus is planned at 100 MW, with roughly 10 MW in the first phase. The design documents for AKASHI Data Center 1, Phase 1, hold the Uptime Institute's Tier IV Certification of Design Documents. Tier IV is the top of the Institute's scale; Kursiv described it as 99.995% infrastructure availability, fully redundant engineering systems and maintenance without downtime.
The bank's release lays out the wider project. Total investment is about $354 million. The campus will have four independent data center modules with their own power and telecoms infrastructure, and one module is being designed for high-density AI workloads and high-performance computing with liquid cooling. The site is carrier-neutral, with four separate fibre entry points and links to Kazakh and international operators. The first phase is due to start commercial operation in 2027.
One number does not line up yet. On 26 June, at the EDB annual meeting in Almaty, the two sides signed a memorandum, and AKASHI put the figure at $90 million to build the first module. Kursiv reported that module at 10 MW and 520 racks, out of 4,224 racks for the full campus. On 29 June the company itself wrote that the project still had to clear the bank's credit committee and legal procedures. The October agreement is for $31.2 million. The bank has not explained the gap or said whether further tranches will follow, so it is too early to say how the two figures relate.
AKASHI says its first module is 125% pre-booked and that more than 80% of demand comes from international companies. That is the company's own figure; no independent data is available. In the bank's release, chairman Vladislav Minkevich argues that Kazakhstan can export digital infrastructure: when foreign firms run their computing in the country, the revenue stays there. Sergey Ignatov, EDB senior managing director and head of the project block, tied the deal to the government's Year of Digitalisation and Artificial Intelligence.
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The project should not be confused with the Data Center Valley in Ekibastuz, a state and Kazakhtelecom effort aimed at 1 GW. AKASHI is a private commercial campus an order of magnitude smaller, though both expect their first capacity in 2027. With a cumulative portfolio of 348 projects worth $22.1 billion at the end of 2025, the EDB is not making a large bet here. What matters more is that it has opened data centers as an asset class.
Companies weighing rack space or compute in Kazakhstan may want to ask a few things first: how much of the first 10 MW is already contracted, how firm the 2027 start date is, which phase the liquid-cooled AI module falls into, and who funds the rest beyond the $31.2 million.
Sources:
Eurasian Development Bank (official press release), https://eabr.org/en/press/releases/edb-expands-investment-in-kazakhstan-s-digital-infrastructure-31-2-million-for-akashi-data-center/
Trend, https://www.trend.az/casia/kazakhstan/4236403.html
Kursiv, https://kz.kursiv.media/2026-06-26/dnlt-yeabr-vydelit-90-mln-na-stroitelstvo-pervogo-v-kazakhstane-data-tsentra-urovnya-tier-iv/
Kursiv (English), https://kz.kursiv.media/en/2026-06-26/engk-yeri-kazakhstan-to-get-first-tier-iv-data-center-with-90m-edb-loan/
AKASHI Data Center (company website), https://akashi.cloud/news/eabr-memorandum-90m/
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