Huazhi Future, a subsidiary of Chinese IT firm Maase, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Kazakh telco KT-Telecom for the development of a large-scale data center.

The campus would be located in the northeastern city of Ekibastuz, but details about the size, capacity, and construction timeline were not provided.

The Kazakh government is trying to promote Ekibastuz as a 'data center valley' by taking advantage of the city's coal basin.

Huazhi said that this data center would form part of its “Stars Distributed Intelligent Computing Center Project”, a RMB5 billion ($738m) project to build data centers in China’s western provinces. Xinjiang, the country’s westernmost province, shares a border with Kazakhstan.

The Stars project was announced earlier this year, in April 2026.

Memoranda of Understanding are preliminary, non-binding agreements.

Maase is based in Chongqing, China, and has interests in AI, batteries, and energy. The company listed on the Nasdaq back in 2019 and has lost most of its value since IPO, dropping from $408 to around $18.80 a share, an approximately 95 percent drop.