Mimoza Kusari promotes project for “AlFactory” 1.2 Gigavats in Kosovo, experts: Tales of tupan, lack of energy and basic infrastructure

In a Facebook post, Kusari announced he met representatives of the American company Dardania Capital, their partners from NVIDIA and Hercules Capital, with whom he discussed the strategic project for the construction of a modern database centre dedicated to artificial intelligence.

According to it, the project envisions a capacity of 1.2 GW, making Kosovo the first country in the region and Central Europe with an infrastructure of its kind.

The minister stressed that the investment would be in line with the strategy for digitalisation and innovation, would connect with universities and research institutions and create new jobs, making Kosovo more attractive for strategic investments.

But this has been rejected by Bleron Baraliu, activist and businessman from the US. Baralius describes the project as unbelievable.

Neither can Kosovo support (with the current) such a project, nor has economic practice a giant date like this in Kosovo. Then they said 20MW, maybe I had believed, so 1/50 of what you're advertising", he wrote.

Baraliu also published an analysis in which a database with capacity 1.2 is argued GW would require almost as much as all of Kosovo's maximum electricity consumption during the winter.

According to him, such a project would require virtually double the country's electricity production capacities.

Even informative technology entrepreneur Iron Doll, whose company operates in the data industry since 2006, voiced doubts that this project could be realised under these circumstances.

It says that, although his company manages infrastructure that serves about 3 million unique users a day, it does not keep servers in Kosovo precisely because of the lack of basic infrastructure.

Kosovo's"lacks basic infrastructure. Neither for Allah nor for processing simple websites do we have servers in Kosovo", Dolly wrote.

He added that over the past two decades, they have consistently analysed the possibility of investments in Kosovo, including talks with international investors, but, according to him, feasibility studies have never resulted in positive.

According to Doli, the main advantage this industry requires is cheap and abundant electricity.

The database business is nothing more than energy sales business, but in a more sophisticated way", he wrote.

Although the government presents the project as a major opportunity to develop digital economy and artificial intelligence, the capacity mentioned by 1.2 Gigavat has nothing to do with Kosovo's current energy reality.

The project is suspected to be alive, given that Kosovo has not generated a new capacity for electricity production for many decades. Kosovo even remains a major importer of electricity.