Abu Dhabi-based tech company G42 has partnered with U.S.-based chipmaker Cerebras to deploy a new supercomputer system in India, boasting an impressive 8 exaflops of computing power. This significant collaboration was announced on the sidelines of the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, marking a pivotal moment for India's technological advancement. The system will be hosted within India, adhering strictly to local data residency, security, and compliance regulations.

The primary objective of this project is to furnish essential computing resources for advanced AI applications, catering to a diverse range of beneficiaries including educational institutions, government entities, and small to medium-sized enterprises. Manu Jain, CEO of G42 India, emphasized the strategic importance of this development, stating, “Sovereign AI infrastructure is becoming essential for national competitiveness. This project brings that capability to India at a national scale, enabling local researchers, innovators, and enterprises to become AI-native while maintaining full data sovereignty and security.” The initiative also involves key collaborators such as Abu Dhabi’s Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) and India’s Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC).

This deployment is expected to significantly enhance India’s computational capacity and bolster its sovereign AI initiatives. Andy Hock, chief strategy officer at Cerebras, highlighted that it “will accelerate training and inference for large-scale models, enabling researchers and developers to build AI tailored to India’s needs.” G42 and MBZUAI have a precedent in AI innovation, having released Nanda 87B last year, a Hindi-English large language model built on Meta’s Llama 3.1 70B model, designed to understand casual speech in both languages.

The India AI Impact Summit served as a launchpad for numerous other substantial AI infrastructure initiatives. Indian conglomerate Adani pledged a staggering $100 billion to develop up to 5 gigawatts of data center capacity across the country by 2035. Similarly, Reliance announced plans to invest $110 billion over the next seven years for gigawatt-scale data centers. OpenAI has also joined forces with Tata Group to secure 100 megawatts of AI compute in India, as part of its ambitious Stargate project, with plans to scale this to 1 gigawatt in the future.

Further underscoring India's commitment to becoming an AI powerhouse, India’s technology minister Ashwini Vaishnaw revealed at the summit that the country aims to attract over $200 billion in infrastructure investment within the next two years. This will be facilitated through a strategic mix of tax incentives, state-backed venture capital, and comprehensive policy support. Already, major U.S. technology giants including Amazon, Google, and Microsoft have committed approximately $70 billion towards expanding AI and cloud infrastructure in the country, signaling strong international confidence in India’s digital future.