In a groundbreaking development, US technology giant NVIDIA and Indian tycoon Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries have unveiled ambitious plans to establish AI supercomputers within India. This visionary collaboration is poised to create AI infrastructure exceeding the capabilities of India’s fastest supercomputer by more than tenfold.
This significant announcement follows a meeting between NVIDIA’s founder and CEO, Jensen Huang, and India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, earlier this week. NVIDIA, which has been operating in India since 2004, currently manages four engineering development hubs across Gurugram, Hyderabad, Pune, and Bengaluru, employing a workforce exceeding 3,800 professionals. The strategic alliance with Reliance seeks to cultivate a large language model specifically trained on India’s diverse languages, uniquely tailored to fuel generative AI applications catering to the country’s vast population.
The Collaboration of Reliance and NVIDIA
The collaboration will grant Reliance access to NVIDIA’s advanced GH200 Grace Hopper Superchip and DGX Cloud, an AI supercomputing service hosted in the cloud. The GH200 introduces a significant paradigm shift in computing architecture, delivering extraordinary performance capabilities coupled with substantial memory bandwidth.
The implementation and management of this pioneering AI infrastructure will be overseen by Reliance Jio Infocomm, under the experienced stewardship of Jio. Leveraging their extensive expertise in mobile telephony, 5G spectrum, and fiber networks, Jio is poised to effectively deploy and administer this cutting-edge AI computing infrastructure.
The AI infrastructure’s initial residence will be in AI-ready computing data centers, with a forward-looking expansion plan designed to encompass 2,000 MW. Reliance’s strategic vision extends to developing AI applications and services tailored for their vast user base, which includes 450 million Jio customers. Additionally, Reliance is committed to providing energy-efficient AI infrastructure accessible to scientists, developers, and startups throughout India.
The transformative potential of AI technology in India is substantial. It can empower rural farmers to access real-time weather information and crop pricing in their local languages via mobile phones. Furthermore, AI can offer expert medical symptom diagnosis and accurate imaging scans in regions where immediate access to medical professionals may be limited. Additionally, AI’s predictive capabilities can significantly enhance cyclone forecasts using extensive historical atmospheric data, enabling timely evacuations and shelter arrangements for vulnerable populations.
CEO of NVIDIA
Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA, expressed his enthusiasm about the collaborative venture with Reliance to pioneer state-of-the-art AI supercomputers in India. He emphasized the significance of India’s scale, data, and talent as invaluable assets for this endeavor. With the deployment of the most advanced AI computing infrastructure, Reliance is poised to create indigenous large language models powering generative AI applications crafted in India, for the benefit of India’s citizens.
Mukesh Ambani, Chairman and Managing Director of Reliance Industries, underscored the monumental importance of this partnership. He believes that computing and technology supercenters like the one envisioned in collaboration with NVIDIA will serve as the catalyst for India’s accelerated growth, akin to the transformative role played by Jio in advancing the nation’s digital landscape.
Akash Ambani, Chairman of Reliance Jio Infocomm, reaffirmed Jio’s steadfast commitment to spearheading India’s technology renaissance. Their mission is to democratize access to cutting-edge technologies. The collaboration with NVIDIA marks a pivotal stride toward establishing a state-of-the-art AI cloud infrastructure in India, further propelling the nation toward its aspiration to become a global AI powerhouse.
