NVIDIA Vice President: Armenia Can Become a Global Center for Fundamental AI Research

YEREVAN, October 13. /ARKA/. Armenia is achieving success in the high-tech sector. NVIDIA Vice President Rev Lebaredyan spoke about this in an interview with ARKA News Agency on the sidelines of the DigiTec-2025 forum held in Yerevan.

"Despite being a small country with a difficult geographic location, landlocked, with closed borders, and having survived a war, look how the high-tech sector, GDP, productivity, and the economy as a whole have grown over the past five years. It's simply miraculous," Lebaredyan said. He encouraged people to stroll the streets of Yerevan.

"There's traffic, people, and cars everywhere, because everyone is working and producing. The last slide of my presentation featured a wall of logos of Armenian companies working in AI. This is impressive for such a small country," Lebaredyan said.

He noted that now that peace is returning to the country and there's the prospect of opening borders, all previous "brakes" on the economy and technological development will disappear.

"And if we were able to do all this with such restrictions, then when opportunities open up, we should grow many times over," Lebaredyan said.

He acknowledged that, in a regional context, Armenia's IT sector is more developed than its neighbors'. But everyone is working to catch up.

"If we do nothing, they will catch up—in two, five years, I don't know when, but they will. And that's good—we want everyone to develop. But we mustn't stop. We can't be content with being 'the best in the region,'" Lebaredyan said.

He reminded everyone that technology is constantly evolving.

"If you stop, you lose. You need to constantly look ahead, understand what will happen next, and prepare for it in advance. That's why I'm promoting the idea of ​​building AI infrastructure in Armenia. "The next step is to become a global center for fundamental research in computer science and technology," Lebaredyan said.

He expressed confidence that Armenian universities should be known as the best in the world, at least in certain areas. To achieve this, it's necessary to select several narrow, strategic areas and attract the world's best researchers to the country.

"We can invite them through the AI ​​center: offer access to a supercomputer, a lab, and interact with talented students. Let them come for 6-12 months, teach and conduct research here. This way, we'll plant the seed of science that will grow into global achievements and spawn startups," Lebaredyan said.

He recalled that today, fundamental research in computer science requires a supercomputer. Even universities like Harvard and Stanford lack their own supercomputer capabilities.

"Their researchers come to work at NVIDIA—to work for me—to gain access to the necessary tools. And if such a supercomputer appears in Armenia, we'll gain a temporary advantage." “It needs to be used to build an ecosystem that will take us to the level of leaders,” Lebaredian said.-0-