Tashkent's Saudi Arabia-backed TAS-1 data center is being built by DataVolt, and its first phase will be completed by year-end. That’s the opening move in a regional race for data center capacity, with Kazakhstan’s Nvidia-backed project expected to offer 125 megawatts by 2027. The people at the bottom don’t get a vote in this competition. The money does.
Who Holds the Keys
The Uzbek facility in Tashkent and the Kazakh campus mark the start of a regional competition for data center capacity, according to the article. DataVolt is building TAS-1, and the project carries Saudi Arabia’s backing. In Kazakhstan, the Nvidia-backed project is expected to bring 125 megawatts online by 2027. Those are the numbers that matter to the people steering this race. Capacity. Backing. Expansion. The usual language of power dressed up as progress.
The story was written by Yevgeniya Mikhailidi and published August 3, 2026 at 10:53 JST. It places the Uzbek project at the center of a new scramble across Central Asia, where corporate and state-backed capital moves first and everyone else is expected to adjust later. The article says the race is intensifying. That’s the polite version.
What the Region Gets
The first phase of TAS-1 will be completed by year-end. That detail matters because it shows how quickly these projects move once the right backers line up. The article does not describe any local say in the process, only the buildout itself and the competition it triggers. The facility is in Tashkent. The campus is in Kazakhstan. The capacity target is 125 megawatts. The timeline runs to 2027. The machinery of investment keeps its own schedule.
The article said the Uzbek facility and the Kazakh campus mark the start of a regional competition for data center capacity. That framing tells the story plainly enough. Central Asia is being turned into a site for infrastructure rivalry, with Saudi Arabia-backed and Nvidia-backed projects setting the pace. The people living around these projects are not the ones deciding the terms. They’re the terrain.
The Race, Not the People
The source gives no sign of mutual aid, community control, or any horizontal organizing around these projects. It gives us the opposite: a competition led by outside capital, with one project in Tashkent and another in Kazakhstan, both presented as markers of a broader regional push. The article’s focus stays on the buildout, the backing, and the capacity figures. That’s where the power sits.
TAS-1’s first phase will be completed by year-end. Kazakhstan’s project is expected to offer 125 megawatts by 2027. Those are the hard facts in the piece, and they show a familiar pattern: decisions made high above, construction pushed through, and ordinary people left to live with the consequences. The article calls it a race. For everyone else, it looks a lot more like a takeover with better branding.