• Karakoram-01 uses cold-plate liquid cooling and prefabricated power systems for sovereign-cloud, enterprise and AI workloads
  • Uptime Institute lists Phase 1 with Tier III Design Documents certification; customer IT load and occupancy remain undisclosed

The fact

SKY47, a Pakistani digital-infrastructure and sovereign cloud provider, and ZTE have launched Karakoram-01 in Islamabad. The facility was inaugurated on 24 July. ZTE says it has 8.5MW of total power and is intended for sovereign cloud, enterprise, AI and high-performance computing workloads. The vendor says it completed the mechanical, electrical and plumbing scope in eight months and supplied cold-plate liquid cooling, prefabricated power modules and intelligent busbars.

Uptime Institute lists Karakoram 1, Phase 1, with Tier III Certification of Design Documents. Its public awards database does not currently list Tier III Certification of Constructed Facility for the site. The sources reviewed do not disclose available or commissioned IT megawatts, customer occupancy, named tenants or measured operating efficiency. ZTE's descriptions of Karakoram-01 as Pakistan's first and largest purpose-built AI-ready data centre remain company claims.

The assessment

With Karakoram-01 open, the next question is how much capacity SKY47 can actually bring into service for customers. The reported 8.5MW refers to total facility power, so it does not indicate how much IT load is available for servers and accelerators after cooling and other site systems are accounted for.

That matters because SKY47 is positioning the facility for sovereign cloud and AI workloads, where usable power and cooling at the rack level determine what customers can deploy. The launch confirms that the infrastructure is in place, but the available sources do not show how much IT capacity has been commissioned or how much is already occupied. For BTW readers, customer deployments and disclosed IT megawatts will give a clearer picture of Karakoram-01's operating scale than the 8.5MW facility figure alone.

What to watch

The next useful disclosures are customer deployments, commissioned IT capacity and the first high-density liquid-cooled workloads. Uptime Institute currently lists Karakoram-01 Phase 1 for Tier III Design Documents certification, so any Constructed Facility certification would provide another measure of completion. Occupancy, available IT megawatts and service-availability data would give a clearer view of how much of the site is in active use.