Reliance, Nvidia partner to develop a large AI language model for India

US chipmaker Nvidia and Mukesh Ambani-led oil-to-telecoms conglomerate Reliance Industries Ltd have announced partnership to create a large language model for artificial intelligence based on regional Indian languages, the companies said on Friday.

"Large language models" are natural language processing systems, which are trained on massive volumes of text and are capable of answering questions, or generating new text.

"In a major step to support India’s industrial sector, Nvidia and Reliance Industries on Friday announced a collaboration to develop India’s own foundation large language model trained on the nation’s diverse languages and tailored for generative AI applications to serve the world’s most populous nation," said the US chipmaker in a statement.

Nvidia will provide the computing power required for the project, while Reliance will work on creating AI applications, such as a local language app that can interact with farmers to provide weather information and crop prices, Nvidia said. AI can help provide, at massive scale, expert diagnosis of medical symptoms and imaging scans where doctors may not be immediately available. AI can better predict cyclonic storms using decades of atmospheric data, enabling those at risk to evacuate and find shelter, said the US firm, which recently saw its valuation cross a whopping $1 trillion.

The companies will work together to build AI infrastructure that is over an order of magnitude more powerful than the fastest supercomputer in India today. Nvidia will provide access to the most advanced NVIDIA® GH200 Grace Hopper Superchip and NVIDIA DGX™ Cloud , an AI supercomputing service in the cloud. GH200 marks a fundamental shift in computing architecture that provides exceptional performance and massive memory bandwidth.

The AI infrastructure will be hosted in AI-ready computing data centers that will eventually expand to 2,000 MW. Execution and implementation will be managed by Jio, which has extensive offerings and experience across mobile telephony, 5G spectrum, fiber networks and more.

"The Nvidia-powered AI infrastructure is the foundation of the new frontier into AI for Reliance Jio Infocomm, Reliance Industries’ telecom arm. The global AI revolution is transforming industries and daily life. To serve India’s vast potential in AI, Reliance will create AI applications and services for their 450 million Jio customers and provide energy-efficient AI infrastructure to scientists, developers and startups across India," said Nvidia.

Interestingly, the partnership has been announced days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi met CEO of American software firm Nvidia Jensen Huang and they talked at length about the ''rich potential'' India offers in the world of artificial intelligence.

In a post on X, Modi said, ''Had an excellent meeting with Mr. Jensen Huang, the CEO of @nvidia. We talked at length about the rich potential India offers in the world of AI.

''Mr. Jensen Huang was appreciative of the strides India has made in this sector and was equally upbeat about the talented youth of India,'' the PM said.

“We are delighted to partner with Reliance to build state-of-the-art AI supercomputers in India,” said Jensen Huang. “India has scale, data and talent. With the most advanced AI computing infrastructure, Reliance can build its own large language models that power generative AI applications made in India, for the people of India.”

Jio has broad expertise, infrastructure and engineering skill to roll out and manage the new AI computing infrastructure. The collaboration with NVIDIA also aligns with its strategy of serving as a large, comprehensive digital, cloud and networking platform for both consumers and business customers, said Nvidia.

“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 Mukesh Ambani, chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries. “I am delighted with the partnership with Nvidia and looking forward to a purposeful journey together.”

“At Jio, we are committed to fueling India’s technology renaissance by democratising access to cutting-edge technologies, and our collaboration with Nvidia is a significant step in this direction,” said Akash Ambani, chairman of Reliance Jio Infocomm. “Together, we will develop a state-of-the-art AI cloud infrastructure that is secure, sustainable and deeply relevant across India, accelerating the nation’s journey towards becoming an AI powerhouse.”

Nvidia Corporation is an American multinational technology company that was founded on April 5, 1993, by Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky, and Curtis Priem, with a vision to bring 3D graphics to the gaming and multimedia markets.