This is a landmark step in India for the AI landscape. Reliance Industries Ltd. will be partnering with NVIDIA, the world leader in accelerators for AI computing. Under this partnership, Reliance and NVIDIA plan to establish a massive infrastructure to create access to advanced AI that will be available at reasonable costs across India. Reliance Chairman Mukesh Ambani and NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang announced this strategic tie-up at the NVIDIA AI Summit in Mumbai on 24 October.
Reliance will make use of the powerful 200GB supercomputer by NVIDIA to set up AI capabilities scalable and versatile, much like how Reliance Jio changed the game in mobile data access in India. Ambani's vision is very clear: make AI as accessible to the common people as Jio made mobile data, bridging the technology gap and empowering millions across India. This will encompass the establishment of a mega 1 GW data center at Jamnagar, Gujarat. It will operate on renewable energy and also be scaleable with iterations of the future NVIDIA technologies.
India has been identified as the country with a huge talent pool in tech for a very long time. This cooperation makes it possible to turn the country into a core power at the AI level, not only to fill its domestic needs but also to conquer global markets. Ambani dreams of "hundreds of millions" Indians contributing to AI worldwide. Jensen Huang said that "India has all the ingredients to become an AI superpower: data, models, infrastructure, and hundreds of millions of users.".
This is in consonance with the vision of the Prime Minister, who outlines digitally transforming India so that it adds value to its data assets and develops indigenously indigenous AI capabilities. Ambani and Huang insisted that the open-source AI models like Meta's Llama would allow Indian developers to build solutions that are geared toward the deployment of Indian languages and the local context.
Reliance wants to create "affordable AI for all" in India, a model it applied with Jio's telecommunications services, bringing digital access to millions and bringing down mobile data costs sharply. This time around, with the GB 200 supercomputer, Reliance wants to build an AI infrastructure meant for India and export AI-based services elsewhere in the world. As Huang put it, "To lead in AI, you need data, AI models, and a large base of users," which India has aplenty. The infrastructure will also break the Indian dependence on foreign AI capabilities through developing its own solutions in AI.
But in the Indian AI ecosystem, it was not just Reliance that entered into a deal with the US-based NVIDIA. Instead, it was Tata Group that has emerged as India's biggest industrial conglomerate recently entered into a deal with the US-based NVIDIA. According to it, Tata Communications will install the newest of NVIDIA chips inside an India-based cloud-based supercomputer that would significantly improve Tata's ability to serve international markets in real-time application such as live sports streaming.
The Indian government's AI Mission is similarly in line with what NVIDIA has planned, but this is a pure and simple independent arrangement between NVIDIA and Reliance, not part of the public-private model that will drive the AI Mission. Government officials indicate that NVIDIA has even approached the Centre to detail how India's compute infrastructure can be scaled up-a step toward helping deliver that vision: transforming India into an AI hub for the world.
The private sector of India is also embracing AI in a big way. In the list are: Netweb Technologies India Ltd and E2E Networks Ltd, who are taking NVIDIA chips into their enterprise data centers, and Yotta Data Services, part of Hiranandani Group that expanded NVIDIA's AI capabilities in its Shakti cloud platform. Also, Tech Mahindra and Tata Consultancy Services have established business units dedicated to NVIDIA specifically for the advancement of AI solutions into other sectors.
With the strategic focus of NVIDIA on India, the country could soon become one of the largest markets for AI technology, in terms of deployment and innovation. As Huang said, India has evolved from being the "back office of technology" to becoming the "front office" of AI innovation. As such, the partnership and AI-led projects should stamp Indian credentials in the global context. Partnership between Reliance and NVIDIA is something more than a step up in technology; it is a shared vision of an inclusive AI-driven future that can be accessible and transformative. With such initiatives, India could soon be considered the leader in the AI landscape worldwide, and therefore contribute towards progress and innovation that would shape the future.
The partnership will reinforce the commitment to developing AI and making India the beacon of AI-led progress throughout the world.
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