Abu Dhabi's technology firm G42 has teamed up with American semiconductor company Cerebras to establish a groundbreaking supercomputer system in India, delivering a formidable 8 exaflops of computing power. Announced during the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, this initiative will comply with India's stringent data residency, security, and compliance standards. The supercomputer is set to serve as a backbone for AI-driven projects across educational institutions, government bodies, and small to mid-sized businesses.
Manu Jain, CEO of G42 India, emphasized the strategic importance of this development, stating, "Sovereign AI infrastructure is crucial for maintaining a competitive edge on a national level. This project empowers India with the necessary infrastructure, allowing researchers, innovators, and enterprises to embrace AI while ensuring complete control and security over their data."
The collaboration also includes Abu Dhabi’s Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) and India's Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC). A notable achievement from the previous year was the release of the Nanda 87B language model by MBZUAI and G42, which supports Hindi-English translations based on Meta’s Llama 3.1 70B model.
Andy Hock, Cerebras' Chief Strategy Officer, remarked on the importance of this deployment for India's AI landscape, highlighting its potential to significantly boost the nation's computational prowess and advance AI sovereignty. The system is expected to accelerate the development of large-scale AI models, tailored specifically to meet India's unique requirements.
The India AI Impact Summit also saw major commitments from Indian and international companies to bolster the country's AI infrastructure. For example, Indian giant Adani announced a $100 billion investment to develop up to 5 gigawatts of data-center capacity by 2035, while Reliance pledged $110 billion over seven years for gigawatt-scale data centers.
In a related development, OpenAI has partnered with Tata Group to secure 100 megawatts of AI computing capacity in India, with plans to expand it to 1 gigawatt through its Stargate project. India's technology minister, Ashwini Vaishnaw, revealed the government's intention to attract over $200 billion in infrastructure investment within two years by leveraging tax incentives, state-backed venture capital, and supportive policies.
So far, U.S. tech giants, including Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, have already committed approximately $70 billion to enhance AI and cloud infrastructure in India.