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NVIDIA has announced its AI Summit 2024, scheduled between October 23 and 25 at the Jio World Convention Centre in Mumbai, India. The summit will feature three days of presentations, hands-on workshops, and networking opportunities aimed at connecting industry experts and exploring advancements in artificial intelligence.
“With accelerated computing infrastructure, research and AI skilling at scale, India has the potential to become the intelligence capital of the world. The upcoming NVIDIA AI Summit is the first-of-its-kind event with a significant focus on India,” said Vishal Dhupar, managing director (Asia-South), NVIDIA.
“It promises to be topical, relevant for India and is a must-attend for developers, startups and enterprises,” he added.
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1. Blackwell is Coming to India
NVIDIA chief Jensen Huang is set to attend the event and participate in a fireside chat. There’s a strong possibility that Huang will announce the availability of NVIDIA’s latest Blackwell GPUs for the Indian market.
According to a report, NVIDIA’s newly announced Blackwell GPUs are expected to begin shipping as early as October. Mumbai-based data center and managed cloud infrastructure provider Yotta Data Services is set to benefit from this early release.
“We are in early talks with Nvidia to source Blackwell GPUs as part of our order, and are in the process of finalising all details,” said Sunil Gupta, the co-founder and chief executive of Yotta.
“We’re looking at procuring around 1,000 Blackwell B200 GPUs by October, which would be equivalent to around 4,000 ‘H100’ GPUs. While a timeline isn’t clear yet, we’re expecting the delivery of Blackwell GPUs before the end of this year, and complete our full existing order by the next fiscal,” Gupta said.
The entire order between Yotta and Nvidia, Gupta said, is worth ~$1 billion.
Notably, the production of Blackwell chips has been delayed by three months or more due to design flaws, which could impact customers such as Meta platforms, Google, and Microsoft, who have collectively ordered tens of billions of dollars worth of the chips.
Earlier this year, Yotta, an elite partner of NVIDIA, received the first shipment of 4,000 GPUs. Yotta plans to scale up its GPU inventory to 32,768 units by the end of 2025. Last year, the company announced that it would import 24,000 GPUs, including NVIDIA H100s and L40S, in a phased manner.
2. Data Centres Loading
During his last visit to India, Huang announced NVIDIA’s partnership with Reliance to develop a foundational large language model tailored to India’s diverse languages and generative AI needs. However, there have been no updates since. It is likely that Reliance will announce something significant during the summit.
Reliance is working with NVIDIA to build AI infrastructure that is over an order of magnitude more powerful than the fastest supercomputer in India today. NVIDIA will provide access to its most advanced GH200 Grace Hopper Superchip and NVIDIA DGX™ Cloud, an AI supercomputing service in the cloud.
Reliance said that it 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.
Similarly, NVIDIA partnered with Tata to build an AI supercomputer powered by the next-generation NVIDIA® GH200 Grace Hopper Superchip. TCS will utilize this AI infrastructure to develop and process generative AI applications. Additionally, TCS announced plans to upskill its 600,000-strong workforce through this partnership.
In a recent earnings call, TCS reported having over $1.5 billion in its AI pipeline, encompassing 270 projects.
Last year, Infosys expanded its alliance with NVIDIA to train 50,000 employees on NVIDIA’s AI technology, integrating these tools with Infosys Topaz to create generative AI solutions for enterprises.
Similarly, Netweb Technologies also partnered with NVIDIA to manufacture NVIDIA’s Grace CPU Superchip and GH200 Grace Hopper Superchip MGX server designs. This partnership supports the Make in India initiative by building a local ecosystem to address demands around AI and accelerated computing applications for both government and private enterprises.
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3. Partnership with Indian AI Startups
It’s highly likely that Indian AI startups will also make their presence felt at the event. Earlier this year, Dhupar said that he found Krutrim, Sarvam AI, and Immersio to be the three ‘most-exciting’ AI startups from India.
NVIDIA chief Huang believes the future of AI lies in physical AI. Recently, Bengaluru-based startup Control One launched India’s first physical AI agent for the global market. They released a video showcasing this agent, which responds to voice commands via a unique operating system. Control One has already integrated this OS into a forklift.
Control One is also an NVIDIA Inception Partner, which grants the startup access to cutting-edge GPU technology and crucial expertise for developing and scaling its AI systems.
Recently, another Indian AI startup, KissanAI, got accepted into the NVIDIA Inception Program.
Who knows, NVIDIA might partner with People+ AI’s Open Cloud Compute as well. OCC seeks to create an open network of compute resources, making it easier for businesses, especially startups, to access the compute power they need without being locked into specific cloud providers.
Meanwhile, NVIDIA recently partnered with Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology to advance AI education and research.
Through this technical collaboration, the university will offer a formidable infrastructure. Its current 227 petaflops of AI performance will be expanded to over 500 petaflops, tailored for the most demanding AI and deep learning tasks. It might follow suit by partnering with more universities.
4. Made In India PCs
Recently, NVIDIA announced a collaboration with six Indian PC builders—The MVP, Ant PC, Vishal Peripherals, Hitech Computer Genesys Labs, XRig, and EliteHubs—to launch Made-in-India PCs equipped with RTX AI. This initiative aims to bring advanced AI technology to Indian gamers, creators, and developers.
“Our vision is deeply rooted in the commitment to India’s future in AI and computing. With India’s AI market projected to reach $6 billion by 2027, the opportunity is immense,” said Dhupar.
“There is an opportunity for India to be the capital of intelligence. The country has the skill sets and talent that understand how to work with a computer,” he added.
The new PCs are part of NVIDIA’s ongoing commitment to gaming and technological advancement. The inclusion of RTX AI technology in these systems offers gamers enhanced performance and visual experiences.
5. Partnership with Indian Govt
Given Huang’s previous engagements with Indian leaders, including a meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, his address may also touch upon NVIDIA’s plans for collaboration with India in AI and chip manufacturing.
The Indian government is actively supporting AI development through the IndiaAI mission, launched in March 2024, which aims to position India as a global AI leader by investing in infrastructure and supporting startups. The mission includes an INR 10,300 crore investment to expand AI infrastructure and make GPUs more accessible. As many as 10,000 GPUs will be made available to startups and a marketplace will be created to benefit R&D facilities and startups.
