Armenia centralizes its artificial intelligence ambitions under a new government-backed platform, the AI Virtual Institute. Though officially launched on July 9, 2025, the institute will begin operations in March 2026.
Created under Armenia’s Ministry of High-Tech Industry, it offers computational resources, mentorship, data storage, research and development space to local startups and researchers in a country where access to hardware and expertise remains limited.
Currently, the initiative is accepting applications. Gevorg Mantashyan, Armenia’s first deputy minister of the high-tech industry, described the institute less as a research center and more as an enabling layer.
“The function of the program is to provide the infrastructure required for high-level development,” he said.
For Armenian startups and students, the cost of hardware remains a primary barrier to AI development. Modern AI workloads require high-performance graphics processing units (GPUs) such as Nvidia’s A100 and H100, which can individually cost tens of thousands of dollars, costs that are out of reach for many local innovators.
“When you don’t have to pay for servers, or when they are co-financed, you become much more flexible,” said Henrik Sergoyan, co-founder of COPA, an AI geopolitical risk assessment platform. Sergoyan listed computational costs as one of the main constraints to scaling.
The Institute intends to address this by providing “vouchers” for high-performance computing. To facilitate this, the government utilizes the infrastructure of international entities. Mantashyan noted that the ministry decided to start this pilot with Amazon Web Services (AWS).
The institute’s reliance on foreign partners extends beyond cloud computing. The French artificial intelligence company Mistral AI will provide language models and tools for use across both public and private sectors. By utilizing this external expertise, the Institute aims to provide mentorship from practitioners in the field. In parallel, the Silicon Valley-based accelerator Plug and Play has been brought in to help translate academic research into commercial products.
“We didn’t create this technology. We imported it,” Mantashyan said when asked about the program’s educational and mentorship components.
The strategy, he suggested, reflects both pragmatism and urgency as Armenia seeks to remain competitive in a fast-moving field dominated by much larger economies. That urgency is part of a broader national effort to brand Armenia as a regional technology hub, as the country bets on its tech industry for international valuation.
Despite the launch, the Ministry is maintaining a cautious stance regarding the specifics of its current applicant pool, without indicating numbers. “I won’t disclose the team yet,” Mantashyan said. “Until the process is summarized, I cannot say who is applying.” He did, however, briefly mention collaboration with health-related sectors, and that applicants now are in the tens by number.
Beyond eligibility logistics, Sergoyan mentioned Armenia’s broader startup environment. Tax policy, in particular, remains a sensitive issue.
“I don’t understand how you can tax startups even at 10%,” Sergoyan said, noting that early-stage firms often operate at a loss while paying both domestic and international obligations. “Globally, there are countries where the conditions are more favorable,” he said.
According to official Ministry guidelines, the Institute is open to startups, research teams, educational institutions, technology companies and individual specialists working in AI, including students enrolled in Armenian institutions. Legal entities in the high-tech sector with a staff size between five and 100 employees are eligible. This criterion is designed to manage limited human resources during the initial phase. Mantashyan said that the pace of adaptation in Armenia balances with the state’s current administrative readiness.
Evaluation begins in the weeks after applications close in mid-February, with computing resources allocated to the first cohort by May 2026, Mantashyan said. Later in the year, the institute plans to launch a government-backed “marketplace” model, under which the state could subsidize up to 50% of the cost for companies adopting AI solutions developed on the platform.
“We will see increased activity from the Virtual Institute by the end of 2026,” Mantashyan said.