Reliance, led by Ambani, and other entities are reportedly in negotiations with OpenAI to introduce the Stargate project, valued at half a trillion dollars, within India.
The tech world is abuzz with the news of OpenAI's ambitious Stargate project, a vast new AI infrastructure initiative, and its potential impact on India's underdeveloped compute ecosystem.
The project, backed by SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle, and MGX, with Masayoshi Son as chairman, aims to revolutionise AI infrastructure not just in the United States, but globally. One of the key players in this project is Reliance Industries, which plans to build one of the world's largest data centers in Jamnagar, Gujarat, and has been in discussions with OpenAI for over six months.
The Indian government sees this as an opportunity to reduce latency, improve user experience, and align OpenAI with tech giants such as Microsoft, Google, Meta, and Amazon Web Services, which already operate or are expanding large-scale facilities in India. In fact, Google Cloud is expected to invest $6 billion in a 1 GW facility in Andhra Pradesh.
OpenAI's entry into India could provide a critical anchor for the country's tech sector. The company has approached Sify Technologies, Yotta Data Services, E2E Networks, and CtrlS Datacenters to evaluate their installed capacities, power availability, and location spread. OpenAI has also launched lower-priced subscription offerings tailored to India and enabled local data residency.
India's current AI compute capacity accounts for less than 1%, a stark contrast to the uninterrupted power supply required for such a data center, which is 1.3 gigawatts. To power a single 1 GW hyperscale data center, nearly 135,000 Nvidia's advanced B100 Blackwell chips would be needed.
OpenAI's CEO, Sam Altman, has identified India as the company's second-largest market after the United States. The company is setting up an office in New Delhi and hiring for sales leadership. India is considered a key market for OpenAI and has the potential to become a large revenue generator.
However, India's combined data center capacity for non-AI cloud workloads is under 1 GW. This underscores the need for significant investment in the country's tech infrastructure to accommodate projects like Stargate.
The Indian government has requested OpenAI to invest 'at least a few billions' of the project's $500 billion corpus in India and store data generated by Indian users locally. The exact details of the discussions between OpenAI and Indian data center operators, including Reliance Industries, are not yet public.
The Stargate project envisions vast new AI infrastructure, not just in the United States, but beyond. With India's potential involvement, this project could mark a significant leap forward for India's tech sector, bridging the gap in AI compute capacity and propelling the country into the forefront of the global AI race.
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