Tajikistan to host Central Asia’s first NVIDIA-supported AI innovation hub

Tajikistan plans to establish a regional artificial intelligence innovation hub with support from US technology company NVIDIA. The center will focus on AI education, research and industrial applications, including robotics and automated mineral sorting. The initiative was presented at an event at the Tajik Embassy in Berlin, attended by Shilpa Kolhatkar, director of NVIDIA’s Global AI Nations program, and representatives of international technology companies, including Armada, VEON, DataVolt, Perplexity and Supermicro. The hub will build on Area AI, a platform launched in Dushanbe in January 2026, and bring together universities, developers, start-ups and industrial companies to advance AI technologies in Tajikistan and across Central Asia.

Tajikistan’s Ambassador to Germany, Imomuddin Sattorov, said the initiative supports the objectives of a UN General Assembly resolution on artificial intelligence and sustainable development in Central Asia, adopted in July 2025 at the initiative of President Emomali Rahmon. Azizjon Azimi, Chairman of the Artificial Intelligence Council under the Ministry of Industry and New Technologies, presented plans to cooperate with NVIDIA on training AI specialists and introducing technologies that enable machines to perceive and interact with the physical world. Industrial AI and robotics The hub will connect the Area AI platform in Dushanbe with a Physical AI Lab planned for an industrial AI park in Khujand. The laboratory will focus on applying AI to real-world industrial processes, linking research and training with practical testing. The first planned industrial project will use AI to sort ore by distinguishing mineral-bearing material from waste rock. Developers will test locally developed models using industrial images and sensor data…