The AI boom has turned data centers from a specialised real-estate niche into one of the defining infrastructure assets of the decade. In a feature on emerging infrastructure geography, Gulf Times argues that this shift is pushing global capital toward Central Asia — and points to Akashi Data Center in Astana as the region’s anchor project.

The energy bottleneck reshaping the map

Modern AI operations demand power densities, electrical interfaces and cooling systems closer to heavy industry than to conventional real estate. That collides with a hard physical limit: the International Energy Agency estimates that roughly 20% of planned data center projects face delay risk because of grid constraints, while new transmission lines in developed economies take four to eight years to build and lead times for transformers and cables have doubled.

Why capital is moving to Central Asia

This supply–demand imbalance is steering investors toward regions that offer strategic location, available land, energy-generation potential, growing digital demand and the ability to build without legacy constraints. Gulf Times draws an explicit parallel with the Gulf: the GCC’s rise as an infrastructure powerhouse rested on the same formula — abundant energy, geographic positioning and long-horizon sovereign capital.

Kazakhstan and the AIFC advantage

Kazakhstan, Central Asia’s largest economy, sits between Europe and Asia with natural links to the Middle East, China, Russia, the Caucasus and South Asia. The Astana International Financial Centre (AIFC) gives investors an English common-law framework that removes much of the regulatory friction typical of frontier markets.

Akashi as the region’s reference asset

The article names Akashi Data Center as the project that “changes the investment conversation.” On an 11-hectare site in Astana, Akashi comprises four autonomous buildings, 4,224 server racks and up to 100 MW of capacity, certified to Uptime Institute Tier IV and benefiting from ambient free-cooling. A strategic memorandum with China Mobile International, signed in July 2025, signals Central Asia’s formal entry onto the global infrastructure map — moving the region from “promising” to proven execution.

According to Gulf Times, AI is creating a new infrastructure geography, and Central Asia offers a rare window to capture first-mover premiums before the opportunity becomes obvious.

Full article published at Gulf Times.