The largest Indian corporate firm, Jio Platforms, has joined up with GPU kingpin Nvidia to work on creating a sizable language model that is trained on India’s varied languages, the two companies announced on Friday. Jio Platforms is expanding into the quickly growing yet locally unchallenged market.
The businesses would also collaborate to create an AI infrastructure that is “over an order of magnitude more powerful than the fastest supercomputer in India today,” they stated, without providing a timescale. According to Reliance, the cloud infrastructure will give academics, developers, startups, scientists, AI professionals, and others in India access to accelerated computing.
Nvidia will provide Jio with the Nvidia DGX Cloud and Nvidia GH200 Grace Hopper Superchip and frameworks for building cutting-edge AI models as part of the agreement. Jio will oversee client access and interactions and the administration of the AI cloud infrastructure.
Despite having the largest population in the world, India has yet to have a big impact on the global AI scene. Most local startups and established businesses in India have concentrated on creating applications employing sizable language models produced by companies like OpenAI. Companies and nations worldwide vied for the highly sought-after Nvidia chips to power their expansive language models.
Reliance, whose oil industry is its main source of income, has grown into several industries over the past ten years to diversify its empire. These industries include telecom and video streaming. Jio Platforms, supported by Meta, Google, Qualcomm, and Intel, is increasingly establishing itself as a partner in technology distribution for numerous international behemoths. To develop cloud data centers and resell multiple commercial solutions, it still has a 10-year agreement with Microsoft. Additionally, just last month, the company strengthened its partnership with Netflix.
According to Mukesh Ambani, chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries, “Computing and technology super centers like the one we envisage with Nvidia will provide the catalytic growth just like Jio did to our nation’s digital march.” As India transitions from being a nation with a data proliferation to building a technological infrastructure for rapid and widespread growth.
Nvidia said separately that it had teamed up with the Indian Tata Group to train 600,000 TCS employees and construct AI infrastructure with Tata Communications.
Industry insiders believe that a skills mismatch in the workforce contributes to India’s need for AI-first firms. According to analysts, introducing generative AI could eliminate numerous service jobs.
“Among its more than 5 million employees, India’s IT industry still employs many low-end workers, such as BPO or system maintenance. The systems are fast improving, even if AI isn’t yet at the point where it could cause disruptions, Bernstein analysts noted in a study this year.
In response, New Delhi said that, in contrast to many other nations, India will not impose restrictions on the development of AI.
To sum up, the collaboration between India’s Reliance and Nvidia is geared towards utilizing Nvidia’s proficiency in constructing substantial language models to propel a diverse array of applications and services both within India and on a global scale. This partnership signifies a deliberate strategy to tap into the potential of AI and language models to improve numerous sectors, spanning healthcare, education, and technology. As they pool their resources and expertise, Reliance and Nvidia are positioned to achieve substantial progress in artificial intelligence, thereby playing a pivotal role in fostering growth and innovation within India’s technology landscape.
