Nvidia H100 chips in a server room at Yotta Data Services Pvt. data center, in Navi Mumbai, India, on March 14, 2024.
Dhiraj Singh | Bloomberg | Getty Images
US AI chip darling Nvidia is expanding its partnerships in India, including with venture capital firms, while betting on the country’s AI ecosystem that has attracted massive investment in big tech.
The company said in a statement on Wednesday that it is working with several venture capital firms, including Peak XV, Z47, Elevation Capital, Nexus Venture Partners and Accel India, to identify and fund AI startups.
This comes as venture capitalists show increasing interest in Indian tech startupswith the strong IPOs market offering lucrative returns.
India is currently holding an AI summit attended by top tech CEOs as well as heads of state. Nvidia boss Jensen Huang was also scheduled to attend, but withdrew due to “unforeseen circumstances.”
Over 4,000 AI startups in India have already joined Nvidia global startup programwhich helps tech startups build, scale and commercialize, according to the chip designer.
The world’s largest company by market capitalization also said it was collaborating with government agencies and research institutes, as well as continuing its efforts to build the country’s national data centers.
Nvidia’s efforts revolve around New Delhi’s “IndiaAI Mission”, aimed at strengthening the country’s AI capabilities and unlocking funding for its AI entrepreneurs.
More broadly, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has set goals for India to become a global technology superpower. In September last year, New Delhi had approved $18 billion in semiconductor projects as it seeks to build a national supply chain.
Nvidia has also partnered with Indian cloud providers such as Yotta, Larsen & Toubro and E2E Networks to supply its AI chip clusters and help build data centers in the country.
An official from New Delhi would have said Tuesday that the country expects to invest up to $200 billion in data centers over the next few years.
The Indian Adani has announcement plans to invest $100 billion in data centers powered by renewable energy and ready for AI. US technology companies, including hyperscalers Amazon, Microsoft and Google, have engaged more than $50 billion for AI infrastructure and chips in the country.
Meanwhile, Nvidia said it is also supporting Indian AI companies through its “NVIDIA Nemotron Models” – a family of Nvidia AI models that organizations can use to create new chatbots, agents and voice systems.
These Nvidia models can be used by Indian companies to train new AI systems on India-specific data and language, thereby aligning with the country’s goal of building sovereign AI.
Sovereign AI refers to a country’s ability to build artificial intelligence based on its own infrastructure, data and industries, so that increasingly critical AI systems are not dependent on foreign suppliers.