Nvidia partners with Reliance, Tatas to promote AI infrastructure in India

MUMBAI/NEW DELHI: India’s top industrial conglomerates Reliance Industries Ltd and Tata Group will join hands with leading global chipmaker Nvidia Corp to build infrastructure for artificial intelligence applications in the country.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, one of the world’s top executives in artificial intelligence, told the company’s Artificial Intelligence Summit in Mumbai that the partnerships were critical to ensuring that Made in India “has AI — not Import intelligence by exporting data”.

“To lead in AI, you need to have AI model technology… you need data, lots of data,” Huang said while announcing Nvidia’s partnership with Reliance Industries during a fireside chat with RIL Chairman Mukesh Ambani. Thursday.

Huang added that India’s key advantage is its “huge industry of computer scientists…This computing industry will become the intelligence industry”. “Leveraging massive amounts of data and massive amounts of consumers to drive the intelligence-to-data and data-to-intelligence flywheel is extraordinary.”

In a chat with Huang, Ambani said that Nvidia will partner with Reliance to build a 1GW (gigawatt) data center in Jamnagar, Gujarat. Ambani said the project “will expand with new iterations of Nvidia technology in the future and will be powered by renewable energy.”

As for the Tata Group, Tata Communications Ltd. CEO AS Lakshminarayanan said in a press statement that the network and computing infrastructure provider will adopt Nvidia’s latest chip “Hopper” by the end of this year to “one of India’s largest of cloud supercomputers.”

Next year, Tata Communications, which manages live broadcasts of global sports events such as Formula 1, will also use Nvidia’s latest “Blackwell” chip, which is expected to be delivered to Indian companies by the end of this year.

Also Read | Tata Communications gets first batch of Nvidia AI chips

These developments have made India a major source of revenue for the world’s largest technology companies, making the market more relevant than ever to big tech companies.

India has long been a strategically key market due to its growing economic strength and geopolitical relevance. Now, with increased government incentives and private sector investment, such as Nvidia’s partnerships with Reliance and Tata, the country could become one of the largest overall markets for U.S. tech giants.

India’s Artificial Intelligence Mission

Two senior government officials with direct knowledge of the developments said Nvidia is “in constant contact” with the center “to help understand where and how to strengthen computing infrastructure” — though the discussions don’t necessarily put Nvidia in the driver’s seat for Indian AI. cutting-edge mission.

“We will not discuss the public-private partnership model for the AI ​​Mission computing infrastructure procurement separately with Nvidia. It is a bidding exercise and any foreign or domestic company can bid,” an official said. “It will be based on who provides the computing infrastructure.” Best pricing to select the winning bidder.”

Reliance Industries and Tata Group are both applicants to India’s AI mission, a second official said.

Also Read | NVIDIA’s Dominance: Be Wary of AI Monopoly Risks

Therefore, Nvidia’s cooperation with Reliance’s Jio Platforms is independent of the US company’s discussions with the Indian government and is a purely commercial development.

In discussions with Huang, Ambani said Reliance would aim to “repeat ‘Jio’ and make AI truly affordable and accessible to common people” – a reference to the company’s impact in the telecom space, At that time, its subsidiary Reliance Jio Infocomm launched 4G services in 2016.

Nvidia is also integrating its chips with Netweb Technologies India Ltd and E2E Networks Ltd for adoption in enterprise data centers. On the software front, Reliance Industries and mobility startup Ola Electric Mobility Ltd are adopting Nvidia’s digital twin and metaverse platform Omniverse.

Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. and Tech Mahindra Ltd. have also launched dedicated Nvidia business units.

Hiranandani Group’s data center company Yotta Data Services also announced wider availability of Nvidia AI applications and services on its Nvidia-powered cloud service “Shakti”.

India: the global technological frontier

Industry experts say Nvidia’s focus on India is natural.

“One of the biggest verticals NVIDIA is betting on right now is sovereign AI. There are big tech companies with massive capital to invest heavily in computing infrastructure. Beyond that, the only ones with money to spend on computing are around the world. government,” said Jaspreet Bindra, founder of technology consulting firm AI&Beyond.

“Given India’s bullish stance on AI, it’s no surprise that Nvidia is betting big in India, and this stance and mutual hype is likely to continue in the near future.”

Also Read | Nvidia’s graphics processing units set off a gold rush in the AI ​​era

Nvidia is the world’s second-largest company by market capitalization, with a market capitalization of US$3.42 trillion. With the emergence of generative AI, Nvidia has become one of the most influential companies in the world – becoming popular after OpenAI launched ChatGPT in November 2022. , Nvidia’s market capitalization is approximately $275 billion.

In March this year, Huang told Mint at a media roundtable that if India is looking for artificial intelligence chips, Nvidia is “absolutely willing to help.”

Huang added that AI innovation can “help India become the front-end of global technology and create greater value, instead of being the back-end of all the world’s technologies”.

According to Pratishtha Bagai.