G42 to deploy 2GW data centre and supercomputer in India
G42 to deploy 2GW data centre and supercomputer in India
G42 will partner with Cerebras to build 8 exaFLOP supercomputer
#India #infrastructure - Abu Dhabi-based AI group G42 plans to build up to 2 Gigawatts (GW) of AI data centres in India and deploy what could be one of India’s largest supercomputers with up to 8 exaFLOP performance, according to comments made to local media by the group's country CEO Manu Jain.
The new data centre capacity is almost double India's total existing data centre capacity, which is currently estimated to be above 1 GW. The data centre investment will fall under a recent bilateral agreement, where the UAE committed to investing in India’s data centre infrastructure and supercomputer capacity. The news comes during the same week that G42 launched NANDA, a groundbreaking 13-billion parameter Hindi large language model (LLM), at the UAE-India Business Forum in Mumbai, India.
SO WHAT? - According to a recent report from global investment banking firm Jefferies, India currently has a total of 1 to 1.5 GW of data centre capacity across the whole country. However, national capacity is expected to grow rapidly to reach 17 GW in 2030, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of more than 50 percent. So, demand for AI infrastructure services is expected to soar over the next few years. Meanwhile, in-country compute capacity combined with the potential of the NANDA LLM to empower large organisations and software developers, has the potential to help a bigger AI ecosystem and the demand for more data and AI services (including opportunities for other G42 group companies).
Some key facts related to G42’s India plans:
G42 announced plans to media in India this week to build up to 2 Gigawatts of AI-ready data centre infrastructure and deploy a supercomputer cluster of up to 8 exaFLOPS in performance being developed with existing G42 supercomputing partner Cerebras Systems.
The announcement was made at the UAE-India Business Forum in Mumbai, where G42 also announced the NANDA 13 billion parameter Hindi-centric large language model, developed by the group’s applied research arm Inception, in collaboration with the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI), and Cerebras Systems.
Last year G42 announced the appointment of former India head of Xiaomi, Manu Kumar Jain as the CEO of its India business.
ZOOM OUT - India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology signed an agreement with the UAE's Ministry of Investment during the official visit to the Emirates by Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi in February. The agreement set out terms for UAE investment in India's digital infrastructure, including the building of a data centre with an initial capacity of up to 2 GW, the deployment of a supercomputer cluster of 8 exaFLOPs capacity, and bilateral R&D collaboration on developing AI models. The digital infrastructure agreement is one of ten or more agreements signed by the UAE over the past year with foreign trade partners.
Read more background on this story:
G42 launches new Hindi LLM in Mumbai (Middle East AI News)
UAE could invest billions of dollars in overseas data centres (Middle East AI News)
Cerebras & G42 build massive cloud supercomputer network (Middle East AI News)