Sky47 opens 8.5 MW Karakoram 01 AI data centre in Islamabad
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif inaugurated the Mari Energies backed facility on 24 July. Its claim to be Pakistan's first AI data centre is disputed.
Sky47, the cloud and AI infrastructure business of Mari Energies, has opened Karakoram 01, a data centre campus at Capital Smart City on the Islamabad and Rawalpindi border. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif inaugurated it on Friday 24 July 2026, with IT Minister Shaza Fatima Khawaja also in attendance.
The first phase has 8.5 megawatts of power. According to a press release from ZTE, the Chinese equipment maker that built the site with Sky47, the campus is Tier III and aimed at AI, machine learning and high performance computing. It uses cold plate liquid cooling, prefabricated power modules and intelligent busbars. ZTE said the mechanical and electrical fit out was finished in eight months.
Startup.pk reported that the design leaves room to grow beyond 50 megawatts and more than 3,000 server racks. The same report named Habib Rafiq Engineering as a project partner and said Mari Energies first flagged the plan in a stock exchange filing on 16 January 2026. Mari Energies is owned in part by the Fauji Foundation, OGDCL and the Government of Pakistan.
Sky47 has more on the way. A 5 megawatt site at Port Qasim in Karachi is targeted for September 2026, and a third node is planned for Lahore, though no date or capacity has been given for it. ZTE said Sky47 intends to work with it again on the Karachi project.
The launch came with a bold label. Government linked coverage called Karakoram 01 Pakistan's first and largest purpose built AI data centre. Startup.pk pointed out that others have made earlier or competing claims. Telenor and Data Vault announced a locally hosted AI data centre in November 2025, and Khazana Cloud and NASTP announced a hyperscale project in 2024. Gul Ahmed Energy's Quantum Global Data Centre, announced in June 2026, is still planned for 2027. The site also notes that 8.5 megawatts is modest by global standards.
The sovereignty pitch is clear. Startup.pk said Sky47 is framed around data sovereignty, at a time when much of the country's data is hosted abroad. Whether local demand for AI compute fills the halls is the open question.
Reported from a ZTE press release and coverage in PhoneWorld and Startup.pk.
