The 3,000-square-meter campus, built by the entrepreneurs behind Miro, ServiceTitan and PicsArt, opens in September 2026 – and arrives with a frontier-AI tenant already in the building.
Every major technology ecosystem eventually gravitates around a physical address. Silicon Valley had its garages; Paris built Station F. This September, Armenia gets its own geographical anchor: AI9, the country’s first international startup campus, opens in Yerevan – and it doesn’t open empty.
Spanning 3,000 square meters with capacity for up to 750 residents, AI9 will bring founders, mentors and investors under one roof. The hub boasts private meeting rooms, shared workspaces, and event zones, all built strategically to enhance collaboration and productivity for technical teams. It will also convene experts across AI, ML, BioTech, and hardware through continuous mentorship and conference programs. Among its initial residents is Async, an AI platform built in Armenia and used by millions of creators worldwide. The campus has raised $4 million from angel investors and venture funds, with backing tied to the founders behind Miro, ServiceTitan, and PicsArt.
For resident founders, that translates into the things that actually move a company forward: structured acceleration and pre-acceleration tracks, a mentor network of operators who pick up the phone, regular meetups and conferences, hackathons, and compute credits and perks from AI9’s partner network.
Among those partner initiatives is Firebird Labs, a venture platform launched by Firebird at AI9 dedicated to frontier AI and providing backing for small, highly technical teams across robotics, aerospace and life sciences. OpenAI is supporting the broader initiative through its technology.
The timing is no accident. Despite a population of just three million, Armenia counts more than 500 startups and two unicorns, the World Bank ranks it among the easiest countries in the world to start a business, and Forbes has called it “the world’s next tech hub.” Yerevan now ranks among the world’s top 1,000 startup ecosystems, and with visa-free or visa-on-arrival access for 65 countries, talent and investors can reach it more easily than many EU or US hubs. International players, including Microsoft, NVIDIA, and SAP, already operate in the country, and globally recognized Armenians such as Nubar Afeyan and Alexis Ohanian have long signaled the diaspora’s reach. AI9’s bet is that the missing piece was never talent or capital – it was a physical space to gather them. Now, Yerevan has one.
AI9 opens to residents in September 2026.
