By Abhirami G and Aditya Soni
NEW DELHI, Feb 18 (Reuters) – India’s Yotta Data Services will spend over $2 billion on Nvidia’s latest chips to set up an artificial intelligence computing hub as it prepares to float its shares, it said on Wednesday, delivering a boost to the country’s fledgling AI drive.
Yotta is aiming to raise up to $1.2 billion from investors to fund its expansion ahead of an initial public offering, potentially due to happen as soon as this year, CEO Sunil Gupta told Reuters on the sidelines of the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi.
He would not provide further details of the capital-raising plans.
INDIA’S AI DRIVE INTENSIFIES
India, trailing the U.S. and China in developing AI technology, has positioned itself as a major destination for global datacenter companies with a large population and developer community that could help turn these investments profitable.
That has helped draw nearly $70 billion in investments from the likes of Microsoft and Alphabet.
The investment also comes amid tighter U.S. export controls that have reshaped global supply chains for advanced AI chips, prompting companies to deepen partnerships in markets such as India.
The more than 20,000 Nvidia Blackwell Ultra chips are expected to be deployed by August. The U.S. company would use half of the chips itself over four years for its DGX AI cloud service that is employed by Indian IT giants such as Tata Consultancy Services or Infosys.
Yotta, , which has been backed by Indian billionaire Niranjan Hiranandani’s real estate group, is a partner firm for Nvidia in India and runs three datacenter campuses in Mumbai, Gujarat and near New Delhi.
Its new AI supercluster will be deployed in New Delhi, with additional capacity from its facility in India’s financial capital Mumbai.
A source with knowledge of the discussions told Reuters Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund Mubadala was in talks to invest in the Indian company in the pre-IPO phase. Yotta declined to comment on potential investors, while Mubadala did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
(Reporting by Abhirami G and Aditya Soni in New Delhi, Surbhi Misra in Bengaluru; Editing by Harikrishnan Nair and Andrei Khalip)
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