Over 70 commercial agreements span AI, battery manufacturing, and data centers as Kazakhstan positions itself as Central Asia's tech and digital asset hub
Kazakhstan and China just signed over 70 commercial agreements worth more than $15 billion on the sidelines of the World AI Conference in Shanghai. The deals, inked on July 16 with both President Xi Jinping and Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev present, cover everything from AI infrastructure and EV battery plants to a new Caspian Sea port terminal.
What’s in the deal package #
The headline grabber is CATL’s commitment to build Central Asia’s first large-scale battery manufacturing facility in Kazakhstan. For a country targeting carbon neutrality by 2060, that’s a cornerstone investment.
Huawei signed a strategic partnership to enhance Kazakhstan’s AI and digital capabilities. Kazakhtelecom and Chinese firms are collaborating on a “data center valley” project.
The deals also include a 600 MW pumped-storage hydropower facility. Cheap, abundant energy is the single biggest cost input for proof-of-work mining and large-scale data center operations. A pumped-storage facility provides exactly the kind of grid-balancing capacity that makes energy-intensive digital operations viable.
Rounding out the package is a multimodal terminal at Kuryk port on the Caspian Sea, designed to handle 15 million tonnes annually.
The bigger picture for digital assets #
These agreements build on a bilateral trade relationship that hit a record $49 billion in 2025. Cumulative Chinese investment in Kazakhstan now exceeds $30 billion, with over 8,500 Chinese-linked companies operating in the country.
Kazakhstan’s central bank allocated up to $350 million from reserves for digital assets as of March 2026. The country also has a planned $10 billion data center development alongside Firebird and NVIDIA, which would create one of Central Asia’s largest compute clusters.
Kazakhstan’s involvement in international AI governance, particularly through frameworks like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, adds a regulatory dimension.
Why crypto investors should pay attention #
Kazakhstan was already one of the world’s top Bitcoin mining destinations before its 2021-2022 regulatory crackdown. The country is now building the energy and regulatory infrastructure to support digital asset operations intentionally, rather than having miners show up uninvited.
Data center investments backed by both Huawei and NVIDIA create redundancy and optionality for blockchain validators, AI inference providers, and decentralized compute networks. Kazakhstan’s Astana International Financial Centre has already been developing frameworks for digital asset regulation.
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