Ooredoo to buy thousands of Nvidia GPUs
Nvidia-Ooredoo deal paves way for GPU-as-a-service in six countries
#Qatar #Demark #datacentres - Ooredoo and global chipmaker NVIDIA have signed a deal paving the way for the Qatari telecom group to buy and deploy thousands of Nvidia Tensor Core GPUs, which will be used to underpin an AI cloud services platform for its Middle East and North Africa business. Ooredoo Group announced its new NVIDIA Cloud Partner status at the TM Forum’s DTW24 Ignite Global Summit in Copenhagen, Denmark. Customers in Qatar, Algeria, Kuwait, Tunisia, the Maldives and Oman will be able to avail of GPU-as-a-Service, offering on-demand access to some of the most advanced AI and machine learning tools available.
SO WHAT? - Although this month's announcement from Ooredoo and Nvidia does not specify any details regarding the telecom group's current or future orders for Nvidia Tensor Core GPUs, it is the most significant intent to acquire Nvidia GPUs from the region to be announced for nearly two years. Over the past year, a number of new U.S. government restrictions have been placed on Middle East orders of high-end AI chips, including more rigorous criteria for export applications and government approvals processes. Last month, Bloomberg broke the news that the US government had recently slowed down the process of approvals whilst it contemplated further measures, adding to the bottleneck facing customers ordering high-end chips.
Here are the key details of the announcement:
Ooredoo Group has announced it is becoming an NVIDIA Cloud Partner (NCP), and is already developing an AI-ready platform powered by NVIDIA’s full-stack of systems, software, and services infrastructure.
Ooredoo plans to deploy thousands of NVIDIA Tensor Core GPUs in its AI data centres to support its customers in Qatar, Algeria, Tunisia, Oman, Kuwait, and the Maldives.
The telecom firm’s GPU-as-a-Service, offers on-demand access to some of the most advanced AI and machine learning tools available - including Generative AI.
The NCP status and plans to build out AI data centre services align with Ooredoo’s aspirations to become a leading digital infrastructure provider in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region.
The agreement and region-wide plans will empower local Ooredoo operators to establish their own local clouds, bringing AI infrastructure closer to customers and reinforcing data security measures require by local data laws.
According to Ooredoo’s media release, the agreement was signed during TM Forum’s DTW24 Ignite Global Summit in Copenhagen, in the presence of Ooredoo Group CEO Aziz Aluthman Fakhroo and NVIDIA Senior Vice President of Telecom Ronnie Vasishta.
ZOOM OUT - This is not the first Nvidia partnership announced with Ooredoo this year. During February, at the Mobile World Congress 2024 in Barcelona, Indosat announced a partnership with the US chipmaker to integrate Nvidia's Blackwell platform into its infrastructure to bring sovereign AI cloud infrastructure and services to Indonesia. Indosat (Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison) is a joint venture majority owned and run by Ooredoo and Hong Kong headquartered operator Hutchison. Indosat plans to build a $200 million AI data centre in Surakarta, using Nvidia's full-stack AI platform and able to offer GPU-as-a-Service.