Nvidia CEO Sees India as a Promising AI Market to Reduce Dependence on China
Nvidia Corp. CEO Jensen Huang recently embarked on a five-day trip to India, where he explored four cities, engaged in discussions with tech executives and researchers, captured several selfies, and had an exclusive conversation with Prime Minister Narendra Modi regarding the AI industry. Huang’s schedule in India was so packed that he admitted to relying on spicy masala omelets and cold coffees to sustain him throughout the busy workdays.
Huang may have been treated as a head of state, but the purpose of the trip was all business. For Nvidia, whose graphics processors are vital to the development of artificial intelligence systems, the South Asian nation of 1.4 billion people presents a rare opportunity. As the U.S. increasingly restricts exports of high-quality chips to China and the world looks for an alternative electronics manufacturing base, India could become a source of artificial intelligence talent, a place to manufacture chips and a market for Nvidia’s products. Along with leading scientists in Delhi, Huang spoke about retraining entire country’s workforce and building future AI models using Indian data and talent, according to several attendees. Huang also told one of the Bangalore-based directors of India’s technology hub that he has great faith in the country’s engineering talent, particularly as a graduate of its top engineering schools, the Indian Institutes of Technology.
“You have the knowledge, you have the talent,” Huang told a news conference in Bangalore. Huang added: “This is going to be one of the biggest artificial intelligence markets in the world.”
Nvidia and India have a common interest in investing in and accelerating the rise of artificial intelligence in the country. Chipmakers cannot sell high-end microprocessors to China, which accounts for a fifth of Nvidia’s sales, because of fears the chips could be used to develop autonomous weapons or engage in cyber warfare. “India is the only market left, so it’s not surprising that Nvidia wants to put several eggs in this basket,” said Neil Shah, director of research at Counterpoint Technology Market Research. While Indian engineers are an important part of the digital workforce. , the country is still far from developing the high-end features needed to manufacture Nvidia’s advanced chips. But India has ambitions to boost electronics manufacturing as well as harness artificial intelligence to boost its digital economy. The country is plowing billions in subsidies to set up chip-making infrastructure to attract companies like Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices Inc and Intel.
“India is strategic for Nvidia’s future,” said Nandan Nilekani, chairman of Infosys Ltd. and architect of key parts of the country’s massive digital public infrastructure. “The government is aggressively building AI infrastructure, and so are large private companies. That’s good news for Huang,” said Nilekani, who dined with the chip billionaire during the visit.
In Delhi, the Taiwanese-American billionaire showed up at the Prime Minister’s residence in his trademark black leather jacket and braved 90-plus degree summer temperatures. Modi later said they spoke about “India’s rich opportunities in the world of artificial intelligence”. Huang and Nvidia saw signs of this potential along the way. India’s largest conglomerate Reliance, owned by billionaire Mukesh Ambani, announced during Huang’s multi-city tour that its Jio Platforms would build AI computing infrastructure in the country. The artificial intelligence cloud uses Nvidia supercomputer technologies end-to-end, the company said in a press release. Reliance and another major conglomerate, Tata, also build and operate cutting-edge AI supercomputers and provide AI infrastructure as a service for use by researchers, companies and startups, Nvidia said, without providing details or sharing a timetable.
India has been reasonably successful in luring giants Apple Inc and Amazon.com Inc to shift contract electronics manufacturing from China – to the point where Apple will sell iPhone 15s made in India this month on launch day. Now we are moving to semiconductors with experience in chip design and no history in semiconductor foundries whatsoever. Almost all high-end chips, including those designed by Nvidia, are made in Taiwan. Over several decades, the country spent billions to reach the current level of production sophistication.
India wants to catch up, but faces challenges in transforming itself into an AI powerhouse. The country currently has neither excess computing capacity — it can handle billions of billions of calculations per second — nor ready-made AI talent capable of writing sophisticated software, said Sashikumaar Ganesan, who heads the department of computing and data sciences at the Indian Institute of Science. “We need to build not only AI infrastructure but also a high-performance computing workforce,” said Ganesan, who was among those invited to Huang’s meeting with AI researchers.
However, India is a rapidly maturing market for cutting-edge technology, said K. Krishna Moorthy, managing director, trade group, India Electronics and Semiconductor Association. This has created a huge demand for Nvidia’s GPUs or graphics processing units. “As India’s digital economy grows, the government mandates data security, data protection and data localization, and this may require more than 100,000 GPUs to build AI cloud infrastructure,” Moorthy said.
The country has telecom giants like Reliance’s Jio, which collect billions of data points every day from their half a billion mobile users and hundreds of millions of retailers. “Data generated from 1.4 billion Indians can prepare the country for the next phase of digital growth,” Moorthy said. “Huang understands that this is where the next growth phase of AI-enabled chips is happening.”
Nvidia already has four engineering centers in India, including in Bangalore and the Delhi suburb of Gurgaon, employing a total of 4,000 engineers, its second largest talent pool after the United States. During his trip, Huang held town halls in each location and emphasized the importance of remaining competitive in the rapidly evolving AI market. Speaking to the workers, he repeated a phrase he has used publicly before, offering a twist on the hunt-or-be-hunted saying: Either you run for food or you run from not being food.
