Yotta Data Services is in the data centre business since 2019. It was co-founded by Sunil Gupta, the CEO. The datacentres are being converted into compute units to produce intelligence. In past, water on one side generated electricity on the other side. These days we put data on one side to get intelligence on the other side. India slowly could emerge as the AI factory of the world by following this strategy. Yotta has the backing of Niranjan Hiranandani, the real estate tycoon. Yotta provides access to organisations such as Wells Fargo to data storage and computing power so that they can scale up or down without creating their own infrastructure.
To convert data centres into AI factories, what you require are AI chips from Nvidia. These are used to train the LLMs and build applications such as ChatGPT (OpenAI) and GitHub Copilot, the coding assistant of Microsoft.
Yotta wants to allow the least expensive access to Nvidia AI chips to Indian firms and startups. The smaller companies with tight budgets can get access to AI chips by giving equity, rather than cash.
The global AI market currently at $160 billion plus is likely to reach $2 trillion by 2032. Thus, for AI these are early days, and there would be a gold rush.
Yotta has already received an eagerly awaited consignment of 4000 H100 chips from Nvidia. Each GPU costs $30,000 to $40,000. Each unit looks beefy and bulky. The arrival of the maiden consigment is a dream moment for Yotta. It has planned to receive 16000 more chips by June 2024, so as to have 20000 such chips. This nowhere compares to huge buys of Facebook — 3.5 lac H100s by the end of 2024, and Microsoft buys of tens of thousands.
India is receiving special attention after a meet between Nvidia CEO and our PM. The supplier realizes that India is a big market, with data and talent, and will receive priority treatment.
Yotta’s consignments kept the custom officer’s busy because of its high value. There was additional paperwork and so many bureaucratic approvals. On arrival at Yotta’s Mumbai suburban office the consignment boxes were adorned with flowers and vermilion and hymns were chanted by a priest.
AI research in India will receive a boost by having infrastructure which is supercritical.