Tata Comm-Nvidia AI Cloud to target global customers

The AI Cloud of Tata Communications and the U.S. chip giant Nvidia is likely to fetch customers from overseas markets besides its core audience in the domestic market. The AI Cloud is expected to be launched by the end of this financial year.

In the recent earnings call, AS Lakshminarayanan, managing director and chief executive officer, Tata Communications, says there is a solid partnership emerging. "We are working very closely on the various aspects of the architecture and the build-out," he says.

“Even though it will be built and launched in India, there is a potential for even international customers to use this in due course,” says Lakshminarayanan. Tata Communications is going through all the details, making sure the launch is successful, he adds.

Tata Communications is building an AI supercomputer powered by the next-generation NVIDIA GH200 Grace Hopper Superchip. It is not only about buying the graphics processing unit (GPU), Tata Communications needs to do the engineering work to get the architecture right and set up the data centers. It is also building the platform layer on the infrastructure layer.

Lakshminarayanan believes that AI has huge potential in India. With the launch of its AI Cloud, the company will be able to help and move the needle, he told analysts. “The government has announced a huge commitment to use AI as well,” he says. The start-ups and enterprises in the country are also expected to power their systems with AI. The AI infrastructure is expected to empower enterprises to transfer data across the AI cloud at high speeds.

In September, Nvidia announced an extensive collaboration with Tata Group to deliver AI computing infrastructure and platforms for developing AI solutions. Announcing the partnership, Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia, said, “Data centers worldwide are shifting to GPU computing to build energy-efficient infrastructure to support the exponential demand for generative AI.”

TCS had also formed a partnership with Nvidia to utilise the AI infrastructure and capabilities to build and process generative AI applications. TCS will upskill its 6 lakh workforce to leverage the AI partnership.

Commenting on the collaboration with Nvidia, N Chandrasekaran, chairman of Tata Sons, earlier said, “The impact of AI and machine learning is going to be profound across industries and every aspect of our lives.”