Abu Dhabi-based tech company G42 has collaborated with U.S. chipmaker Cerebras to introduce 8 exaflops of computing power through a new supercomputer in India, as announced during the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi.
The system, hosted in India, will adhere to local data residency, security, and compliance regulations. The initiative seeks to offer AI computing resources to educational institutions, government bodies, and small and medium enterprises.
“Sovereign AI infrastructure is crucial for national competitiveness. This project brings that capability to India at a national level, allowing local researchers, innovators, and businesses to become AI-native while ensuring full data sovereignty and security,” said Manu Jain, CEO of G42 India, in a statement.
The project also involves Abu Dhabi’s Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) and India’s Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC). Last year, MBZUAI and G42 unveiled Nanda 87B, a Hindi-English large language model based on Meta’s Llama 3.1 70B model, understanding casual speech in Hindi and English.
“Deploying this system in India is a major advancement in the nation’s computational capacity and sovereign AI efforts. It will hasten training and inference for large-scale models, enabling researchers and developers to create AI suited to India’s needs,” stated Andy Hock, chief strategy officer at Cerebras.
The India AI Impact Summit this week featured several AI infrastructure initiatives launched by both Indian and global companies.
The Indian conglomerate Adani committed $100 billion to create up to 5 gigawatts of data-center capacity in the country by 2035, whereas Reliance announced a $110 billion investment over the next seven years for gigawatt-scale data centers.
OpenAI has partnered with Tata Group to secure 100 megawatts of AI computing power in the country through its Stargate project, with plans to scale up to 1 gigawatt. India’s technology minister Ashwini Vaishnaw mentioned plans for the country to attract over $200 billion in infrastructure investment by 2028 using tax incentives, state-backed venture capital, and policy support.
U.S. tech giants, including Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, have already pledged around $70 billion to enhance AI and cloud infrastructure in India.