Nvidia betting big on India ties, to help in Hindi-language AI model

Nvidia Corp.'s Jensen Huang is forging partnerships with India's biggest corporate names from Reliance Industries Ltd. to Infosys Ltd., underscoring the importance of the world's most populous country to the AI pioneer's future.

The US chip company, which is holding one of its AI summits in Mumbai, highlighted the ways Indian partners across industries are using its AI technology to bolster their products and services. Chief Executive Officer Huang is due to discuss AI's potential in India with retail-to-refining mogul Mukesh Ambani at the event on Thursday.

India has emerged as a potentially major AI arena, with the country of 1.4 billion adopting the technology in industries including agriculture, education and manufacturing to boost efficiency. While still a small part of their revenue, global tech companies from Nvidia to Microsoft Corp. and Meta Platforms Inc. are betting on the rapidly-growing economy as a growth market and operations base.

Nvidia said it'll help India's Tech Mahindra Ltd. to build a Hindi large language model, and work with e-commerce company Flipkart on its conversational customer-service systems. It'll also collaborate with India's health-care companies to help them improve productivity in patient care and research.

The US company has emerged at the forefront of a global AI boom, supplying the chips tech leaders like Microsoft and Google use to develop artificial intelligence. Huang has toured the globe this year, pushing countries and enterprises to adopt AI technologies he's dubbed a “new industrial revolution.”

Nvidia began its operations in Bangalore, southern India, two decades ago and also has development centers in three other cities in the country, with a total of about 4,000 engineers, its largest employee base after its home country.

About a year ago, it struck pacts to build AI data centers with local conglomerates including Ambani's Reliance Group and the Tata Group. Reliance Industries is building a range of AI tools and applications called JioBrain, Ambani said at the company's live-streamed shareholders meeting in August, during which he mentioned the term AI at least 80 times.

India has risen in prominence for global tech companies as the US's tensions with China have escalated. Nvidia is among companies whose business with China has been curtailed by Washington's restrictions. Huang described “India's moment” after meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the US last month.

While India boasts a burgeoning digital economy, its AI infrastructure is still developing. The government has set aside $1.2 billion under the IndiaAI Mission to build data centers vital to building AI systems and commercializing technologies.