By
Bhushan Akolkar
April 29th, 2024
Nvidia will provide Jio with extensive AI supercomputer solutions while Reliance’s Jio Platforms will oversee the AI cloud infrastructure’s management.
In a major development on Friday, September 8, Reliance Industries’s Jio Platforms joined hands with GPU giant Nvidia to build large language models on AI. In the announcement, the company said that this AI model will be based on the regional Indian languages.
“Large language models” refer to natural language processing systems that undergo training on extensive datasets of text and possess the capability to respond to queries or generate new textual content. The development comes as India’s largest corporate firm seems to make and entry in the rapidly emerging AI world.
The companies will collaborate on constructing an AI infrastructure that will surpass India’s current fastest supercomputer by more than ten times in terms of computing power. However, they did not specify a timeline for this project. Reliance mentioned that this cloud infrastructure would offer accelerated computing resources to a wide range of individuals, including researchers, developers, startups, scientists, and AI experts across India.
As a part of the agreement, Nvidia will provide Jio with extensive AI supercomputer solutions, including the Nvidia GH200 Grace Hopper Superchip and Nvidia DGX Cloud, as well as frameworks for developing advanced AI models. In return, Jio will oversee the AI cloud infrastructure’s management and will also manage customer interactions and access. Speaking on the development, Nvidia chief Jensen Huang said:
“We are delighted to partner with Reliance to build state-of-the-art AI supercomputers in India. India has scale, data and talent. With the most advanced AI computing infrastructure, Reliance can build its own large language models that power generative AI applications made in India, for the people of India.”
India’s Moment in AI
It looks like some of the big conglomerates of India are joining forces to spearhead and compete in the global AI arena. The majority of Indian startups and established local companies have primarily concentrated on creating applications utilizing large language models developed by organizations such as OpenAI.
Along with Reliance, Nvidia has also announced a separate partnership with India’s Tata Group to provide AI training to 600,000 employees at Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and develop AI infrastructure in collaboration with Tata Communications.
Industry experts point to India’s shortage of AI-first startups, partly attributed to a skills gap in the country’s workforce. The emergence of generative AI could potentially replace numerous service jobs, a concern highlighted by analysts.
