The Habr analysis reports Firebird’s first phase in Razdan at 6,144 NVIDIA B200 accelerators and 15 MW. It also reports Eleveight operating in Gagarin with 512 B300 accelerators, with stated capacity increasing from 1.2 MW at opening to 5 MW. These are the thesis’s observable anchors: two distinct sites, current hardware and reported capacity.
The mechanism is a split between local hosting and external demand. Firebird says 90% of its capacity is intended for US companies in the region, and Perplexity is named as an early customer. Eleveight says it reserves 20% for universities, research organizations and nonprofits. That allocation makes the facilities potentially valuable as regional compute supply without establishing that most of the resulting services or economic gains accrue locally. The article also presents an export-licensing channel and energy supply as enabling conditions; it does not independently establish every causal claim about either.
Why now: the report describes customer access as already enabled at both sites, while larger future capacity remains a plan rather than an operating fact. Implications include a need to distinguish installed or accessible capacity from announced expansion, and to track who actually consumes it. Evidence boundary: reported specifications and company statements in one Habr analysis are not independent utilization, financial, or grid-audit data. Watch whether independent evidence confirms utilization, customer mix and delivery of planned expansion.