The US Federal Reserve says artificial intelligence is becoming one of the factors driving business productivity. The next stage of the transformation is the development of proprietary computing infrastructure. That is why the world's largest technology companies are investing trillions of dollars in data centers, while Kazakhstan and local corporations are pursuing their own AI projects with international partners.
Fed outlook: AI is becoming part of everyday business
In its July Beige Book, the US Federal Reserve analyzed the impact of artificial intelligence on the economy. The Beige Book is a review of current economic conditions and established and emerging trends; the Fed publishes it eight times a year. The report is prepared by the 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks, whose experts interview business representatives, banks, industry associations and economists.
In the latest edition, analysts highlighted an important trend: businesses are increasingly integrating AI into their operations. The Fed says a company's competitive edge now depends not only on access to AI models, but also on having its own computing infrastructure capable of running them. The world's largest technology companies continue to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in the data centers and computing infrastructure needed to train and operate AI models. Goldman Sachs Research estimates that the largest technology companies' combined capital expenditure on artificial intelligence and data centers will reach $5.3 trillion between 2025 and 2030.
Rising demand for computing power is already affecting adjacent industries. For example, US energy company NextEra Energy announced plans to acquire Dominion Energy for about $67 billion. If regulators approve the deal, it will become the largest acquisition in the history of the US energy sector. One of the main drivers of the merger is the rapid growth in power consumption by data centers supporting AI systems. Dominion supplies electricity to the world's largest data center cluster in Northern Virginia, while the combined company aims to take a leading position in powering AI infrastructure.
How Kazakhstan is developing its AI sector
An economy built on digital services and supporting infrastructure is becoming a major competitive advantage. Kazakhstan is developing technology projects, building AI legislation and expanding the use of digital services in the public sector. The UN ranked Kazakhstan among the world's top 10 countries in the Online Services Index, reflecting the high accessibility and quality of government services delivered online.
Infrastructure projects require billions of dollars in investment, a significant share of which is being provided by private businesses. Freedom Holding Corp., for example, is building several data centers. Its most prominent project in this field is the Freedom AI Super Cluster, which the holding company is developing together with Kazakhstan's Ministry of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development and Citi. The sovereign AI center, valued at more than $2 billion, is set to become Central Asia's largest computing infrastructure for artificial intelligence. The project includes a high-performance GPU cluster. Its goal is to provide the region with its own computing capacity and reduce reliance on foreign infrastructure.
A GPU cluster is a group of powerful computers equipped with graphics processing units that operate as a single system. Instead of performing complex calculations on one computer, workloads are distributed across dozens or thousands of GPUs, accelerating data processing. The first phase of the cluster is scheduled to launch in the first quarter of 2027, with full deployment planned for 2027-2028.
At the same time, the holding company is building the Freedom Cloud data center in Almaty, with investment of up to 175 billion tenge. It will serve as a local cloud provider, offering companies and government agencies virtual servers, development platforms and computing capacity for machine-learning projects.
Another major company project is the development of the Akashi commercial data center in Astana, the first Tier IV facility in Central Asia, with the highest level of security and maximum fault tolerance. On its platform, the partners plan to deploy cloud services and AI solutions for corporate clients in Kazakhstan and other countries in the region, train local engineers and launch new digital products. In early 2026, the facility signed an agreement to host computing capacity for artificial intelligence workloads, and more than 60% of its planned capacity had already been reserved by clients from Kazakhstan, China and the United States before launch. The project is also set to establish a new Central Asian record for server racks: the number will reach 4,200, compared with the region's current high of about 3,800. According to the company, the data center's launch could nearly double the region's combined computing capacity.
In May 2026, the holding company registered Freedom AI Ltd., a subsidiary with charter capital of 365.4 million tenge. The new entity will process data, host applications, develop cloud services and build artificial intelligence infrastructure. The company said the project is being implemented in partnership with Nvidia and aims to develop Kazakhstan's national AI infrastructure.
International partnerships with global tech giants
Freedom Holding Corp.'s strategy is built on cooperation with global technology companies, giving Kazakhstan access to the best technologies currently available in the market. In addition to Nvidia, the holding company became Amazon Web Services' first local partner in Central Asia. This gave businesses, startups and government agencies across the region access to AWS's full range of cloud services - from computing power and data storage to artificial intelligence and machine-learning tools and advanced cybersecurity systems.
Freedom Holding Corp. is also working with Nokia to establish a laboratory for developing and testing next-generation solutions for data centers, artificial intelligence and high-performance networks. Another major initiative is its partnership with OpenAI and the Government of Kazakhstan: under the ChatGPT Edu project, 165,000 educators across the country will gain access to an advanced version of the AI chatbot, helping accelerate the adoption of generative AI technologies in education.
In March this year, Freedom Holding Corp. and Chinese technology giant Alibaba Cloud signed a memorandum of understanding and a reseller partnership agreement. The agreements provide for joint development of cloud services, localization of AI-based solutions and integration of Freedom Cloud into Alibaba Cloud's global ecosystem.
The project will localize Alibaba Cloud technologies to meet the requirements of the Central Asian market. This will allow the Kazakhstan-based holding company to use advanced cloud computing and AI models that comply with local regulatory requirements. According to Timur Turlov, founder and CEO of Freedom Holding, the partnership with one of the world's leading cloud technology companies will help accelerate the development of the region's digital infrastructure.
