"A good business": how Kazakhstan is building Central Asia's largest data center

Kazakhstan is building Central Asia’s largest Tier IV data center. The first phase is scheduled for launch in early 2026. The project is being delivered by Akashi Data Center. CEO Vladislav Minkevich spoke to Kursiv about global industry trends and how the facility will reinforce Kazakhstan’s digital leadership in the region.

Why Tier IV matters now

Tier IV is the Uptime Institute’s highest classification for data-center reliability: 99.995% uptime, fully fault-tolerant, independent cooling and communication circuits, zero single points of failure. It’s the standard large cloud, financial, and government workloads demand — and until now, Central Asia didn’t have one.

Regional demand

Minkevich notes that 61% of Akashi’s capacity is reserved pre-launch, equivalent to 3.18 MW of the first phase’s IT load. Demand is being driven by:

Local and regional enterprises moving workloads off-cloud for sovereignty reasons
International players (China Mobile, Virtuozzo, Fortinet) establishing infrastructure footprints
Growing AI/ML training demand where Central Asia’s power costs and latitude are structurally favorable

Scale

When fully built out, Akashi’s campus in Astana will house 4,224 racks across four buildings on 11 hectares, with power scaling from 42 MW at phase one to 100 MW at full capacity.

We reply within one business day. Отвечаем в течение одного рабочего дня. Бір жұмыс күні ішінде жауап береміз.

Questions about colocation, partnership, or the project? Reach out however suits you. Вопросы по колокации, партнёрству или проекту? Напишите удобным способом. Колокация, серіктестік немесе жоба туралы сұрақтарыңыз бар ма? Бізге ыңғайлы жолмен жазыңыз.

Quarterly reports from the build site —
direct from the engineering team. Ежеквартальные отчёты со стройплощадки —
напрямую от инженерной команды. Құрылыс алаңынан тоқсан сайынғы есептер —
инженерлік командадан тікелей.

Commissioning milestones, capacity releases, and Tier IV certification progress. Short, substantive, zero marketing — one email per quarter. Вехи пусконаладки, релизы мощности и статус сертификации Tier IV. Коротко, по делу, без маркетинга — одно письмо в квартал. Іске қосу кезеңдері, қуат релиздері және Tier IV сертификаттау мәртебесі. Қысқа, нақты, маркетингсіз — тоқсанға бір хат.

01 Construction and commissioning milestones, with dated evidence. Вехи строительства и пусконаладки с датированными подтверждениями. Құрылыс пен іске қосу кезеңдері, нақты күндермен.

02 Capacity releases — racks and MW opening for reservation. Релизы мощности — стойки и МВт, доступные для брони. Қуат релиздері — брондауға ашық сөрелер мен МВт.

03 Uptime Institute audit status and certification timelines. Статус аудита Uptime Institute и сроки сертификации. Uptime Institute аудитінің мәртебесі және сертификаттау мерзімдері.