NVIDIA Partners With Reliance and Tata to Advance AI in World’s Most Populous Nation.
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang details collaboration with Reliance Industries Limited and Tata Group.
The world’s largest democracy is poised to transform itself and the world, embracing AI on an enormous scale.
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Speaking with the press Friday in Bengaluru, in the context of announcements from two of India’s largest conglomerates, Reliance Industries Limited and Tata Group, NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang detailed plans to bring AI technology and skills to address the world’s most populous nation’s greatest challenges.
“I think this is going to be one of the largest AI markets in the world,” said Huang, who was wrapping up a week of high-level meetings across the nation, including with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, leading AI researchers, top business leaders, members of the press and the country’s 4,000-some NVIDIA employees.
The companies will work together to create an AI computing infrastructure and platforms for developing AI solutions. It will be based on NVIDIA technology like the NVIDIA GH200 Grace Hopper Superchip and NVIDIA DGX Cloud.
GH200 marks a fundamental shift in computing architecture that provides exceptional performance and massive memory bandwidth, while DGX Cloud, an AI supercomputing service in the cloud, makes it easier for enterprises to train their employees in AI technology, access the technology internally and provide generative AI services to customers.
In his exchange with more than a dozen of India’s top tech journalists following the announcement, Huang said computer science expertise is a core competency for India, and that with access to technology and capital India is poised to build AI to be able to solve challenges at home and abroad.
“You have the data, you have the talent,” Huang said. “We are open for business and bring great expertise on building supercomputers.
During the freewheeling back and forth with the media, Huang emphasized India’s strength in information technology and the potential for AI to accelerate the development of the nation’s IT industry.
“IT is one of your natural resources. You produce it at an incredible scale. You’re incredibly good at it. You export it all over the world,”
Huang said
India’s ‘AI Moment’ with NVIDIA, Reliance and Tata
Earlier, after meeting with many of the region’s top technology leaders — including startup pioneers, AI proponents, and key players in India’s digital public infrastructure — Huang hailed “India’s moment,” saying the nation is on the cusp of becoming a global AI powerhouse.
While India has well-known technical capabilities — distinguished technical universities, 2,500 engineering colleges and an estimated 1.5 million engineers — many of its 1.4 billion people, located across sprawling metropolitan areas and some 650,000 villages, collectively speaking dozens of languages, have yet to fully benefit from this progress.
Applied in the Indian context, AI can help rural farmers interact via cell phones in their local language to get weather information and crop prices. It can help provide, at a massive scale, expert diagnosis of medical symptoms and imaging scans where doctors may not be immediately available. It can better predict cyclonic storms using decades of atmospheric data, enabling those at risk to more quickly evacuate and find shelter.
Reliance Industries and Tata Communications will build and operate state-of-the-art AI supercomputing data centers based on such technology, utilizing it for internal AI development and infrastructure-as-a-service for India’s AI researchers, companies and burgeoning AI startup ecosystem.
That effort, Huang said, during his conversation with the Indian technology press, promises to be part of a process that will turn India into a beacon for AI technology.
“AI could be built in India, used in India, and exported from India,”
Huang said.
NVIDIA and Reliance
The NVIDIA-powered AI infrastructure is the foundation of the new frontier into AI for Reliance Jio Infocomm, Reliance Industries’ telecom arm. The global AI revolution is transforming industries and daily life. To serve India’s vast potential in AI, Reliance will create AI applications and services for their 450 million Jio customers and provide energy-efficient AI infrastructure to scientists, developers and startups across India.
AI can help rural farmers interact via cell phones in their local language to get weather information and crop prices. It can help provide, at massive scale, expert diagnosis of medical symptoms and imaging scans where doctors may not be immediately available. AI can better predict cyclonic storms using decades of atmospheric data, enabling those at risk to evacuate and find shelter.
The AI infrastructure will be hosted in AI-ready computing data centers that will eventually expand to 2,000 MW. Execution and implementation will be managed by Jio, which has extensive offerings and experience across mobile telephony, 5G spectrum, fiber networks and more.
“As India advances from a country of data proliferation to creating technology infrastructure for widespread and accelerated growth, computing and technology super centres like the one we envisage with NVIDIA will provide the catalytic growth just like Jio did to our nation’s digital march,” said Mukesh Ambani, chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries. “I am delighted with the partnership with NVIDIA and looking forward to a purposeful journey together.”
“At Jio, we are committed to fueling India’s technology renaissance by democratizing access to cutting-edge technologies, and our collaboration with NVIDIA is a significant step in this direction,” said Akash Ambani, chairman of Reliance Jio Infocomm. “Together, we will develop a state-of-the-art AI cloud infrastructure that is secure, sustainable and deeply relevant across India, accelerating the nation’s journey towards becoming an AI powerhouse.”
NVIDIA and Tata
Tata Communications and NVIDIA will develop an AI cloud in India aimed at providing critical infrastructure that enables computing’s next lifecycle. Tata Communications’ robust global network combined with the AI cloud will empower enterprises to transfer data across the AI cloud at high speeds, enabling them to effectively bring the AI cloud to the doorstep of every enterprise.
TCS will utilize the AI infrastructure and capabilities to build and process generative AI applications. The NVIDIA partnership will further enable TCS in collaborating with its customers to drive reimagination with an AI-first approach. Additionally, TCS will upskill its 600,000-strong workforce leveraging the partnership.
This partnership will also catalyze the AI-led transformation across Tata Group companies ranging from manufacturing to consumer businesses.
“The advancements in AI have made focus on AI a central priority in governments, industries and society at large. The impact of AI and machine learning is going to be profound across industries and every aspect of our lives. This is a key transformational trend of the decade and every company must prepare to make this AI transition. Our partnership with NVIDIA will democratize access to AI infrastructure, accelerate build-out of AI solutions and enable upgradation of AI talent at scale. Tata Group’s presence across sectors coupled with NVIDIA’s deep capabilities offers numerous opportunities for collaboration to advance India’s AI ambition.”
Commenting on the collaboration with NVIDIA, N. Chandrasekaran, chairman of Tata Sons, said: