Nvidia and India in preliminary talks to develop AI chip

The Economic Times has reported that Nvidia has proposed an AI chip-building project in collaboration with India. 

The Electronics and IT Minister of India, Aswini Vaishnaw, told the Economic Times that the talks were "at a preliminary stage" for "the development of an AI chip". 

Nvidia is reportedly looking to leverage India's chip design talent to create a custom AI chip built for specific use cases within the country, such as security systems and could potentially be used by Indian startups for their own apps.  

In March this year, The Register reported that the Indian government had approved a ₹10,300 Crore ($1.24 billion) fund to improve India's AI infrastructure. 

The plan also includes a new academic institution called the "IndiaAI Innovation Centre" to develop, train and deploy foundational models. 

If things go as planned, Nvidia could handle the core design of the chip with its partners and India's Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) could manage and customize it to suit India's needs. Alternatively, chip customization could be handled by private firms. 

“India is the top choice due to the sheer size of the talent available in chip design, which no other country has,” a government official told the Economic Times.

"The government is currently thrashing out the details such as costing, benefits, and use cases of such a co-developed chip," the source added.