Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has inaugurated Sky47 Karakoram One, an 8.5-megawatt data centre and artificial intelligence cloud facility in Islamabad described as the largest of its kind in Pakistan (The Express Tribune; Pakistan Today).
The prime minister described the project as a major step forward for Pakistan’s digital infrastructure, said it offered “impregnable security”, and framed it as contributing to “a new dynamic and forward-looking Pakistan” (China.org.cn).
The facility was completed on a compressed timeline, and additional capacity is planned for Karachi and Lahore.
The inauguration lands against a mixed set of technology-sector numbers. Pakistan’s IT exports reached a record $4.6 billion in FY26, one of the few external-account lines to beat its trajectory in a year when textile exports stagnated at $17.9 billion — up 0.26 per cent — and the national export target was missed by $4.87 billion (The Friday Times).
Domestic compute capacity has been a recurring constraint cited by Pakistani technology firms, which have historically rented capacity abroad. Whether an 8.5-megawatt facility changes that calculus depends on power pricing and uptime rather than nameplate capacity — and the country’s industrial tariff structure remains under review as part of the IMF programme.
The government has not published the project’s capital cost or its ownership structure.
