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 before moving toward pilot deployment at a mining enterprise.
Other areas of research will include digital twins, 3D mapping and robotic inspections of hazardous or hard-to-reach facilities.
The laboratory is expected to use NVIDIA tools for robotics, simulation and digital environments, including Isaac and Omniverse. Researchers also plan to assess NVIDIA Cosmos models for synthetic data generation and use NVIDIA Jetson technology to run AI directly on devices.
Pilot trials in the mining sector are planned for early 2027.
Tajikistan’s Minister of Industry and New Technologies, Sherali Kabir, said the laboratory could help local engineers introduce advanced technologies at mining enterprises and factories, supporting industrial development and exports.
AI education and local technology development
The hub’s educational program will draw on the NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute and include practical courses, teacher training, university seminars and hackathons.
It will also support applied research, robotics projects and the development of prototypes with industrial partners. Educational materials that can be used offline are planned for schools with limited internet access.
The initiative builds on Tajikistan’s broader AI development efforts. The country adopted a national AI development strategy in 2022, and the Soro project, implemented with the Ministry of Education and Science, is being rolled out in more than 4,000 schools from September 2026. The program includes curriculum development, teacher training and the use of SoroLLM.
Other Area AI participants are developing AI applications and computing infrastructure. The company zypl.ai, for example, provides AI-based decision-making tools to banks in more than 20 countries and has attracted investment from Dutch holding company Prosus and venture fund Carbide Ventures.
The consortium also plans to develop computing capacity using NVIDIA graphics processing units powered by hydropower, supporting AI model training and research.
The initiative’s organizers say the combination of education, local-language AI models and industrial testing could provide a model for other countries developing their own AI ecosystems.