On Friday, the American semiconductor company Nvidia (NVDA.O) announced AI collaborations with the Indian conglomerates Tata Group and Reliance Industries to create cloud infrastructure, language models, and generative applications.
The agreements with two of India’s biggest corporate houses would help the American chip company make further inroads into the South Asian country’s developing AI ecosystem, even if it now faces obstacles in some of its chip shipments to China and other nations because of American regulations.
Before the G20 summit in New Delhi, where attendees include U.S. President Joe Biden, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi this week to explore India’s potential in the AI field.
In the Reliance agreement, Jio, a Reliance (RELI.NS) subsidiary, will manage and maintain the infrastructure and be in charge of consumer interaction. At the same time, Nvidia will provide the processing capacity needed to construct a cloud AI infrastructure platform.
In addition to offering energy-efficient AI infrastructure to researchers, developers, and startups throughout India, Reliance will build AI apps and services for its 450 million Jio (telecom) subscribers.
The Nvidia alliance will be utilized by Tata Consultancy Services (TCS.NS), India’s top exporter of software services, to create and process generative AI applications and a supercomputer, the firms said in a joint statement. By using the relationship, TCS will also upskill its 600,000-strong staff.
According to the announcement, the agreement would accelerate the AI-led transformation across all Tata Group enterprises, from manufacturing to consumer sectors.
Globally, ChatGPT, the popular generative AI chatbot from OpenAI, is powered by computer devices that Nvidia almost exclusively manufactures. Because it reads a written prompt and creates a human-like answer, the AI that powers these applications is called a big language model.
The wealthiest man in Asia and chairman of Reliance, Mukesh Ambani, has previously emphasized the need for “digital infrastructure in India that can handle AI’s immense computational demands.”
Through the arrangement, Reliance will have access to the most recent iteration of Nvidia’s AI processors, the Grace Hopper Superchip, which are designed to conduct AI inference tasks and efficiently power applications like ChatGPT.
Reliance said India’s major AI initiatives, including chatbots, medication development, and climate research, would advance thanks to the new AI infrastructure.
Partner at Counterpoint Research Neil Shah said Jio has to use AI to “make sense” of the data collected from millions of consumers and develop into a digital firm offering services outside of telecom.
He added that in the retail, telecom, and financial sectors, “the AI infrastructure will enable it to provide accurate recommendations and cross sell products and services across its enormous client network.”
According to Reuters ‘ Friday exclusive story, Reliance is also considering a venture into chip production in India.
