Global IT giants Amazon and Microsoft have shown interest in cooperating with Akashi Data Center, the Tier IV facility under construction in Astana, ER10 reports.
Construction began in June 2025; first-customer go-live is targeted for April 2026. Kazakhstan today has about 3,800 racks while demand grows by 400–500 a year; Akashi will add roughly 4,000, effectively doubling capacity. Power: 50 MW, with a path to 100 MW — on the order of 10% of Astana’s electricity use.
“Amazon reached out on its own; Microsoft also initiated contact. We were not chasing them — they came to us after learning about the project. Some companies were ready to take up to 500 racks or even a full 1,000-rack module,” said CEO Vladislav Minkevich.
Sitting at the crossroads of Russia, China, and Central Asia, Kazakhstan is becoming a natural place to host servers. Globally, 1 MW of IT load is associated with about 250 jobs. Astana has almost no spare racks — companies park gear in shopping-mall rooms unfit for government and critical systems.
Akashi is positioned as the first commercial Tier IV data center in the EAEU/CIS under Uptime Institute classification — with full redundancy for power, cooling, and connectivity.
Source: ER10