Reliance and Nvidia build large language model

Reliance Industries’ Jio Platforms and GPU giant Nvidia announced Friday that they are building a large language model trained on India’s diverse languages. The largest Indian corporate firm is expanding into the fast-growing but locally uncontested space.

The companies will also build an AI infrastructure “over an order of magnitude more powerful than the fastest supercomputer in India today,” without a timeline. Reliance said the cloud infrastructure would speed up computing for Indian researchers, developers, startups, scientists, AI experts, and others.

Nvidia will give Jio its GH200 Grace Hopper Superchip, DGX Cloud, and AI model frameworks as part of the deal. Jio will manage the AI cloud infrastructure and customer access.

“We are delighted to partner with Reliance to build state-of-the-art AI supercomputers in India,” said Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who met several local entrepreneurs and Prime Minister Narendra Modi in India. India has data, talent, and scale. Reliance can build large language models that power generative AI applications made in India for Indians with the most advanced AI computing infrastructure.

Despite being the world’s most populous nation, India has yet to make an impact in AI. The majority of Indian startups and established companies have focused on developing applications using OpenAI’s large language models. Companies and nations worldwide are vying for Nvidia chips to power their large language models.

Reliance, whose main revenue source is oil, has diversified into telecom and video streaming in the past decade. Jio Platforms, backed by Meta, Google, Qualcomm, and Intel, is becoming a technology distribution partner for many global giants. It has a 10-year deal with Microsoft to launch cloud data centers and resell many business offerings, and last month it expanded its Netflix partnership.

“As India advances from a country of data proliferation to creating technology infrastructure for widespread and accelerated growth, computing and technology super centres like the one we envisage with Nvidia will provide the catalytic growth just like Jio did to our nation’s digital march,” said Reliance Industries chairman and managing director Mukesh Ambani.

Nvidia also announced a partnership with India’s Tata Group to train 600,000 TCS employees in AI and build AI infrastructure with Tata Communications.

Industry insiders blame India’s lack of AI-first startups on a workforce skills gap. Analysts warn that generative AI may replace many service jobs.

IT in India still employs many low-level BPO and system maintenance workers among its 5 million employees. In a report this year, Bernstein analysts said AI systems are improving rapidly but not disrupting.

In response, New Delhi said India will not regulate AI growth, unlike many other countries.