Pakistan Gets its First AI Data Center

by Riaz Haq

Dec 10, 2025

Data Vault and Telenor Pakistan have launched the nation's first dedicated AI data center in Karachi. It is designed to support startups, researchers, and government agencies with high-performance computing and GPU-as-a-service offerings. It is equipped with more than 3,000 Nvidia's highest performance H100 and H200 GPUs for which the Trump Administration issued export licenses. These GPUs cost from $40,000 to $60,000 each, making the Nvidia chips the biggest chunk of the investment made in this AI data center. Other data centers in Pakistan also support AI workloads but this new data center in Karachi is specially designed for AI. It puts the country on a short list of only a handful of nations with locally hosted AI data centers. Pakistanis rank among the world's top five users of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools, securing the fourth spot among 21 nations surveyed by the Schwartz Reisman Institute.

The local hosting of data in Pakistan ensures data sovereignty to comply with national data protection and security standards. It also achieves faster response times for queries.  The data center runs entirely on solar power, making it a green data center solution. Additionally, the government of Pakistan has allocated 2,000 MW of power from the national grid for AI data centers. 

One of the objectives of locally hosted AI data centers is to support Urdu language models (LLMs) trained to help Pakistani consumers who wish to use AI chatbots in local languages. A number of Urdu LLMs have already been developed in the country, including Alif and UrduLlama, both based on the open-source Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct architecture. Another model named UrduGPT is described as Pakistan's own large language model, UrduGPT is fine-tuned specifically for Urdu and regional languages of Pakistan using local datasets and cultural semantics to ensure relevance for native speakers.

Currently, Pakistan has 27 data centers located in Karachi, Lahore, and Islamabad, operated by PTCL, Multinet, and Cybernet. More are being built. Zong, a local mobile phone service operator owned by China Mobile, is building AI-driven cloud infrastructure in Pakistan. Indus Cloud and Huawei have a strategic partnership that aims to launch a next-generation cloud data center, incorporating energy-efficient Huawei technology. XDS and Al Nahal IT Park are partnering to build a liquid-cooled data center at the Al Nahal IT Park in Sindh province. Mari Petroleum Company Limited (MPCL), the state-owned oil and gas firm, is diversifying by forming a subsidiary, Mari Technologies, to build Tier III and Tier IV data centers in Islamabad and Karachi, with the 5MW Islamabad facility set for completion by early 2026.

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  • Riaz Haq

    Indus Cloud Launches Pakistan’s First Cisco AI GPU Cluster - Profit by Pakistan Today

    https://profit.pakistantoday.com.pk/2026/08/11/master-groups-indus-...

    Bringing the country's first brand-new NVIDIA H200 GPUs on Pakistani soil to accelerate the nation's AI revolution

    LAHORE: Master Group's Indus Cloud, Pakistan's First AI-Ready, Renewable-Powered Enterprise Cloud, today announced the launch of the country's first Cisco AI GPU Cluster powered by the latest NVIDIA H200 Tensor Core GPUs, making brand-new NVIDIA H200 GPUs available on Pakistani soil for the very first time.

    This milestone marks a significant step in supercharging Pakistan's AI ecosystem by providing researchers, enterprises, startups, universities, and government organizations with access to world-class accelerated computing infrastructure—without the latency, compliance, and data sovereignty challenges of relying solely on overseas cloud providers.

    The Cisco AI infrastructure, integrated with NVIDIA H200 GPUs, is purpose-built to support demanding AI workloads including large language models (LLMs), generative AI, AI training and fine-tuning, high-performance inference, computer vision, and advanced analytics.

    Hosted within Indus Cloud's purpose-built AI-ready infrastructure, the platform delivers enterprise-grade performance, scalability, security, and reliability while enabling organizations to build and deploy AI solutions from within Pakistan.

    "Artificial Intelligence will define the next era of economic growth, industrial competitiveness, and national innovation. As Master Group, we are building the infrastructure Pakistan needed someone to build. We must build the digital infrastructure necessary to participate in this transformation—not simply consume it. The launch of Pakistan's first Cisco AI GPU Cluster powered by NVIDIA H200 GPUs is an important milestone towards creating sovereign AI capability and empowering our innovators, enterprises, and public sector with world-class computing resources."

    — Shahzad Malik, Managing Director, Master Group of Industries

    "This is more than the launch of new infrastructure; it is the foundation for Pakistan's AI future. By bringing the latest NVIDIA H200 GPUs into the country, Indus Cloud is eliminating a major barrier for organizations seeking access to advanced AI compute. Our mission is to make enterprise-grade AI infrastructure accessible, scalable, and locally available so Pakistan's brightest minds can innovate faster while keeping their data and workloads within the country."

    -----------

    Indus Cloud operates and plans enterprise infrastructure facilities with capacities ranging up to 20MW. This includes a solar-powered setup scaling up to 5MW in Lahore, a site in Nooriabad with up to 20MW of capacity, and broader regional AI data center ecosystem deployments in Pakistan (such as Sky47's 8.5MWKarakorum-01 facility in Islamabad developed with ZTE). [1, 2, 3, 4]
    Facility Capacities and Locations
    Lahore Facility: Features a 500 high-powered rack setup in NSIT Park backed by solar power up to 5MW.
    Nooriabad Facility: Designed with up to 20MW of total capacity.
    ** Islamabad / Related Ecosystem Projects:** Connected large-scale AI and sovereign cloud platforms feature initial power footprints scaling at 8.5MW. [1, 2, 3, 4]
    Technology and Infrastructure Highlights
    Power & Efficiency: Utilizes advanced deployments like Huawei PowerPod systems to reduce physical footprint and lower energy consumption.
    AI Readiness: Built to host high-density AI clusters, enterprise cloud computing, and sovereign data storage workloads within Pakistan. [1, 2, 3]

    Aug 11

  • Riaz Haq

    . [1, 2]
    Key Urdu and Multilingual AI Platforms for Farmers
    • Kissan Dost Bashir: Launched by Telenor Pakistan via its Khushaal Watan platform, this is a 24/7 Urdu conversational voice bot available by dialing 7272 or visiting 7272.pk. It provides real-time mandi (market) rates, weather advisories, and livestock guidance. [1]
    • Savera: Developed by Syngenta through the Cropwise Grower app, Savera is an AI-powered farming advisor that understands regional languages including Urdu, Punjabi, Pashto, and Siraiki to help with crop care and pest management. [1]
    • KissanBot: Built by Concave AGRI, KissanBot offers context-aware text and speech answers in Urdu covering major crops like wheat, rice, and maize using updates from provincial agriculture databases. Learn more at Concave AGRI KissanBot. [1, 2]
    • Urdu AI / Urdu AI Dost: A grassroots initiative turning artificial intelligence into practical learning for rural communities, farmers, and students across Pakistan. Explore their impact and resources at Urdu AI Impact. [1, 2]

    Oct 10

  • Riaz Haq

    Foreign artificial intelligence systems present a multi-layered threat to Pakistan, spanning cultural erosion, economic dependency, security challenges, and cyber risks. [1, 2, 3]
    Cultural and Identity Concerns
    • Erosion of Local Values: Federal IT Minister Shaza Fatima Khawaja warned that foreign-developed large language models (such as ChatGPT) reflect external cultural assumptions—likening their output to the perspective of a young person in the West—which risks reshaping the worldviews of Pakistan's youth, who make up roughly two-thirds of the population. [1]
    • Marginalization of Languages and Heritage: Reliance on Western or external AI stacks threatens local languages (like Urdu and regional dialects), religious norms, and indigenous social frameworks. [1, 2, 3]
    Geopolitical and Strategic Risks
    • Control and Data Sovereignty: Pakistan is caught in the crossfire of a global AI ecosystem race between Western powers and China. Adopting foreign models forces the country to inherit external regulatory assumptions, privacy gaps, and compliance issues that conflict with local laws. [1]
    • Exclusion from Global Governance: Developing nations have largely been sidelined in setting international AI governance standards, deepening global digital and economic inequalities. [1]
    Security and Terrorism Multipliers
    • Militant Misuse: Research published by organizations like Anthropic highlights that AI lowers the barrier for automated coding, surveillance, and targeting recommendations. In Pakistan, militant groups such as the Tehreek-i-Taliban (TTP) and cross-border actors risk using AI tools for propaganda, drone operations, and enhanced target selection. [1]
    • Disinformation and Synthetic Media: AI-generated deepfakes and fake media pose acute challenges to democratic governance and social cohesion, particularly amplified during regional geopolitical tensions (such as skirmishes with India). [1]
    Cyber and Financial Infrastructure Threats
    • AI-Enabled Cyberattacks: Pakistan's National Cyber Emergency Response Team (National CERT) issued Advisory No. 26 warning of AI-driven cyber threats targeting financial institutions, digital payment systems, capital markets, and critical infrastructure (oil, gas, power, and water grids). [1]
    • Automated Exploitation: Threat actors use AI to scale credential theft, social engineering, and automated reconnaissance against vulnerable digital networks. [1]
    Countermeasures and Domestic Response
    • Indigenization Efforts: Pakistan is working on local initiatives, such as the government-backed BuraqAI language model announced at the Global AI & Digital Summit 2026, to process Urdu and regional languages using local computing infrastructure. [1]
    • Policy Frameworks: The government is rolling out national data governance policies, personal data protection legislation, and updates to the National Artificial Intelligence Policy 2025 and National Cyber Security Policy to foster local compute capacity and human oversight. [1, 2]

    5 hours ago