How Armenia is trying to build a Silicon Valley in the Caucasus

Armenia starts early in tech education.

At a typical three-storey state school in the suburbs of Jerevan, Armenian Rajdhani, nine-year-old Slavick is performing its invention-a box with three LED lights.

21 -year -old tech coach Maria, who led 21 -year -old tech coach class, says, “He learned how to control it, and programming language. You can see that the code is written by him.”

Next to them, 14 -year -old Eric and Narek are showing their smart greenhouse models that monitor temperature and automatically control fans through a mobile app.

Other children are exhibiting their inventions enthusiastically: games, robots, apps and smart home projects.

Eleven -year -old Arkel is holding a house cardboard model with a withdrawal cloth.

“I have made my mother’s work easy, a part of the device is set on the roof, and the other is a motor,” they say. “When it rains, the line goes under the roof to keep the cloth dry.”

These young inventors are participating in engineering lab classes where they learn programming, robotics, coding, 3D modeling and much more.

The program began in 2014, and is called Armath, which translates into English as “root”. Today, Armenia schools have 650 Armath Labs.

The initiative was established by a business organization called the Union of Advanced Technology Enterprises (UATE), which represents more than 200 high -tech Armenian companies.

“The vision is that we want to see Armenia becoming a tech center powerhouse that offers extreme values ​​to Armenia and the world,” says Sarcis Karaaton, Chief Executive Officer of UAT.

In his huge, open-plun office in Jerevan, he says that there are now about 4,000 technical companies in Armenia.

Armath is part of UAT education and workforce development program. Mr. Karpatan says that this program is the most successful public-private partnership in the country.

“We increase capital expenditure from the private sector, we go to schools and establish Armath Labs, we donate equipment,” they say. “And the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Education gives us a budget of $ 2M (£ 1.5m) annually to pay the salaries of coaches.”

Now there are more than 600 coaches, and 17,000 are active students.

“The goal is to decide to become an engineer every year among the most talented children,” says Mr. Carapeton.

Armenia is a landlock country of 2.7 million people, the smallest in the South Caucasus region, and its boundaries with neighboring Azerbaijan and Turkey have been closed for decades due to unresolved regional disputes.

Unlike its neighbors, Armenia does not have access to natural resources or sea. But it was the center of mathematics and computer science throughout the Soviet era.

In 1956, the Yerevan Scientific Research Institute of Mathematical Machies were installed in Armenia and by 1960 it developed two first generation computers.

Today, the country is exploiting its inheritance with the ambition to change itself in Tech powerhouse of Caucasus.

And already some success has been achieved. Picsart, an AI-operated photo and video editing website and app, were launched in Armenia in 2011. Today, a company with the same name, which has a dual headquarters in Yerevan and Miami, is priced at $ 1.5BN.

Krisp, which creates audio-processing software, and service Titan, which provides business software, is other Armenian success stories.

Meanwhile, an annual report states that Armenia is the best country in the Cocks sector to launch a company, putting it 57th position globally. It compares with Georgia to the 70th position, and Azerbaijan in the 80th.

An important factor in promoting the technological development of Armenia is the country’s global migrant – some of the world’s estimated Armenians, and people from the Armenian dynasty live elsewhere.

It provides significant connections worldwide, especially in the American tech industry. The US has 1.6 million people of the Armenian dynasty centered on California.

Samel Khachikian is the director of programs in Smartgate, which is an venture capital firm located in both California and Armenia which focuses on technical investments.

He says that if you look at the top 500 companies in the US, “to ensure that you will find at least one or two armenians” in the boardroom or a management level below.

Mr. Khachikian explains how his company helps Armenian entrepreneurs to establish operations in the US.

“Imagine an Armenian start-up, two young people decide to go to America who try to operate there, they have no connection, there is no knowledge about culture how it works.

“It’s going to be difficult, very difficult. We are helping them, it is like a launch of rocket, the first couple of seconds is the most difficult.”

Smartgate takes Armenian founders to Silicon Valley and Los Angeles for intensive networking with top American companies and investors.

But many Armenian start-ups first test their products in their home market.

Irina Ghazarian, Dr. The founder of an app called Yan is changing how Armenians use healthcare that enable them to easily with doctors in book appointments.

Ms. Ghazarian was previously working in product and web design, when she helped the fact that she came from a family of doctors, she identified a difference in the market. “Patients were not getting the right doctors, and the doctors were suffering from endless calls.”

The app operates on a subscription model, with doctors listed on the platform, and plan to expand.

“We are growing at least 25% revenue month from month to month,” says Ms. Ghazarian. “We are almost brake-even in Armenia and this gives us the strength to start expanding in other markets like Uzbekistan.”

Armenia’s tech ecosystem received unexpected boost after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Thousands of Russian IT experts left their country, and many chose to settle in Armenia.

Meanwhile, US chipmaking giant Nvidia transferred its Russian office to Armenia.

Vasili is a Russian IT advisor, transferred to Armenia in 2023. “Armenia was the most favorable for the people of Russia, so that they could help move, and so, they say.

They estimate that the Russian IT community in Armenia now ranges from 5,000 to 8,000 people. This income has stated that in areas such as data processing, cyber security and financial technologies to fill significant skill intervals in the technical field of Armenia.

Nevertheless, Vasili says that Armenia can be expensive and the country needs to reduce tax burden on IT firms if he wants to stay in the country.

However, overall optimism about Armenia’s technical future is high. Samel Khachikian hopes that the region will rise. He pointed to Titan’s service, which floated in the New York Stock Exchange last December, and now exceeds $ 10bn.