How Armenia tries to build a silicone valley in the Caucasus

In Armenia Tech Education, it starts early.

In a typically three-storey public school in the suburbs of Yerevan, the Armenian capital, the nine-year-old Slavic demonstrates his invention-cuty with three LED lights.

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

Next to them, 14-year-old Eric and Namek show their intelligent model of a greenhouse that monitors the temperature and controls fans automatically via a mobile application.

Other children with enthusiasm show their inventions: games, robots, applications and intelligent home projects.

The eleven -year -old Arakel holds his cardboard model to a house with a retractable clothing line.

“I did my mother’s job easy, one part of the device is placed on the roof and another is a motor,” he says. “When it rains, the line goes under the roof to keep the clothes dry.”

These young inventors attend classes in engineering laboratories where they study programming, robotics, encoding, 3D modeling and more.

The program started in 2014 and is called Armath, which translates into English as “root”. Today, there are 650 Armath laboratories in Armenia schools.

The initiative was created 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 to become a technology center that provides Armenia and the world’s most large values,” says Sarkis Karapetian, CEO of Uate.

In his spacious office, he says about 4,000 technology companies in Armenia now.

ARMATH is part of the Uate Education Development and Development Program. Mr. Karapetian says the program is the most successful public-private partnership in the country.

“We are raising capital expenditures from the private sector, we go to schools and create Armath Labs, we donate equipment,” he says. “And the government, the Ministry of Education gives us a budget of $ 2 million ($ 1.5 million pounds) annually to pay the salaries of the coaches.”

There are now more than 600 coaches and 17,000 active students.

“The goal is 5,000 of the most talented children to decide to become engineers every year,” says G -N -Karapetian.

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

Unlike its neighbors, Armenia has no natural resources or access to the sea. But in the Soviet era it was the center of mathematics and computer science.

In 1956, a Yerevan Research Institute was established in Armenia and until 1960 it developed two first -generation computers.

Today, the country embarks on its inheritance with the ambition to become the Caucasus technological plant.

And there is already some success. PICSART, website and photo editing and video editing app in 2011. Today, a company of the same name that has a dual headquarters in Yerevan and Miami is estimated at $ 1.5 billion.

KRISP, which makes audio processing software and Service Titan, which provides business software, are other stories of success in the Armenian way.

Meanwhile, an annual report is said that Armenia is the best country in the rubber region to launch a company by putting it on 57th place worldwide. This is compared to Georgia in the 70th position and Azerbaijan in the 80th.

A critical factor for the strengthening of the technological development of Armenia is the global diaspora of the nation – about 75% of the world’s estimated Armenians and people of Armenian descent live elsewhere.

This global community provides important connections, especially in the US technology industry. In the United States, there are up to 1.6 million Armenian descent focused on California.

Samvel Khachikyan, is the director of Smartgate programs, a risk -based company based in both California and Armenia, which focuses on technological investment.

He says that if you look at the top 500 companies in the United States, “you will surely find at least one or two Armenians” in the meeting room or one level of management above.

G -K Khachikyan explains how his company helps Armenian entrepreneurs organize operations in the United States.

“Imagine starting Armenian, two young people decide to go to the United States to try to work there, they have no relationships, there is no knowledge of the culture how it works.

“It will be difficult, very difficult. We help them, it’s like launching the rocket, the first few seconds are the most difficult.”

Smartgate takes the Armenian founders to the Silicon Valley and Los Angeles for the intensive network with the best US companies and investors.

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

Irina Gazaryan is the founder of an application called Dr. Jan, which changes how Armenians have access to healthcare, allowing them to reserve meetings with doctors more easily.

Previously, Ghhazaryan worked in products and web design when, aided by the fact that it comes from a family of doctors, it identifies a gap on the market. “Patients could not find the right doctors, and doctors suffer from endless calls.”

The application works on a subscription model, with doctors paying to be listed on the platform and there are plans to expand.

“We raise at least 25% revenue a month,” adds Ghazaryan. “In Armenia, we are almost breakthroughs, and this gives us the strength to start expanding to other markets like Uzbekistan.”

Armenia’s technological ecosystem received an unexpected impetus in 2022 after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Thousands of Russian IT specialists have left their country and many have chosen to settle in Armenia.

Meanwhile, the American chip giant Nvidia has moved its Russian office to Armenia.

Vasily is a Russian IT consultant, who moved to Armenia in 2023. “Armenia was the most renowned for people from Russia to help them move, adapt and so on,” he says.

He estimates that the Russian IT community in Armenia now amounts to 5,000 to 8000 people. It is alleged that this tributary has fulfilled important gaps in Armenia’s technology sector in fields such as data processing, cybersecurity and financial technology.

Still, Vasily says that Armenia can be expensive and the country should reduce the tax burden on IT companies if they want to stay in the country.

However, general optimism remains great for Armenia’s technological future. Samvel Hachikian expects the sector to grow. He points to Service Titan, which sailed on the New York Stock Exchange last December and now costs more than $ 10 billion.