Jensen Huang smiles.*
From The Register, December 5:
Project includes hundreds of millions of loonies for a national supercomputing facility
Canada is one of the latest nations to catch the sovereign AI bug and plans to invest $2 billion CAD ($1.42 billion USD) to bolster the nation's domestic compute capacity by funding the development of new datacenters and computing infrastructure north of the 49th parallel.
The so-called Canadian Sovereign AI Compute Strategy comes after months of planning and public comment and aims to ensure local businesses, entrepreneurs, and researchers have access to the compute capacity they need to develop domestic AI products.
"The strategy we're announcing today is a major step toward securing Canada's place as a global AI leader," François-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, said in a canned statement. "This is about Canada showing its ambition, supporting Canadian innovation, and investing in the economy of the future."
According to the office, Canada is already home to 10 percent of the world's leading AI researchers, and more than 140,000 professionals actively engaged in AI development in 2022–2023, a number it says has grown 29 percent compared to the previous year....
....MUCH MORE
We were struck by the possibilities of the SovereignAI plan and have a few posts on same.
First up December 19, 2023
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang Says AI to See ‘Major Second Wave (NVDA)
AI to See ‘Major Second Wave,’ NVIDIA CEO Says in Fireside Chat With iliad Group Exec
NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang says sovereign AI a growing need for countries to reflect unique cultural, linguistic, industrial characteristics
European startups will get a massive boost from a new generation of AI infrastructure, NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang said Friday in a fireside chat with iliad Group Deputy CEO Aude Durand — and it’s coming just in time.
February 2, 2024
"Nvidia chief sees rise of ‘sovereign AI’ infrastructure across nations, driving demand for company’s advanced chips"
This is the sort of thing we were referring to in January 20's "Advanced Micro Devices to Build 2 New Supercomputers in Germany (AMD)": "Taking a page out of Nvidia's playbook."
Nvidia wants every language to have its own large language model. And they want every country to have an Nvidia powered supercomputer (or five) to train and run the LLM on....
....Bi-lingual Canada is good but multi-lingual India is Mr. Huang's dream country.
PM Modi's people should ask for two free supercomputers upfront as part of a five 'puter order.
And side dishes. Maybe a billion dollars worth of gaming chips.
March 5, 2024
Here's Nvidia's "Sovereign AI" Pitch (NVDA)
.... This is terrible. I now have Jensen Huang speaking in Dr. Martin Luther King's cadences as he repurposes the penultimate paragraph of "I have a Dream":
Let AI ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.I may have to go lie down.
Let AI ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.
Let AI ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.
From every mountainside, let AI ring.
May 23, 2024
NVIDIA Earnings Call And Transcript Q1 2025 - May 22, 2024 (NVDA)
....One out-the-door note, Nvidia has basically created a brand-new multi-billion dollar business:
$NVDA CFO on SovereignAI:
— The Transcript (@TheTranscript_) May 22, 2024
"From nothing the previous year, we believe SovereignAI revenue can approach the high single-digit billions this year. The importance of AI has caught the attention of every nation"
June 16, 2024
France's "Mistral AI warns of lack of data centres and training capacity in Europe"
October 4, 2024
"Parlez-vous AI? Francophone scholars warn against English language dominating AI"
Singapore: "Chinese Group Accused of Hacking Singtel in Telecom Attacks"
....Our last couple mentions of Singtel were in reference to Nvidia's roll-out of the Blackwell chip for their sovereign AI program:
....Nvidia said AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure will be among early cloud service providers to offer Blackwell instances, as will Applied Digital, CoreWeave, Crusoe, IBM Cloud and Lambda. Sovereign AI clouds will also provide Blackwell-based cloud services and infrastructure, including Indosat Ooredoo Hutchinson, Nebius, Nexgen Cloud, Oracle EU Sovereign Cloud, Oracle US, UK, and Australian Government Clouds, Scaleway, Singtel, Northern Data Group’s Taiga Cloud, Yotta Data Services’ Shakti Cloud and YTL Power International.— "Nvidia CEO Becomes Kingmaker by Name-Dropping Stocks" (NVDA+++++++)
...For example, Japan plans to invest more than $740 million in key digital infrastructure providers, including KDDI, Sakura Internet, and SoftBank to build out the nation's Sovereign AI infrastructure. France-based, Scaleway, a subsidiary of the Iliad Group, is building Europe's most powerful cloud native AI supercomputer. In Italy, Swisscom Group will build the nation's first and most powerful NVIDIA DGX-powered supercomputer to develop the first LLM natively trained in the Italian language. And in Singapore, the National Supercomputer Center is getting upgraded with NVIDIA Hopper GPUs, while Singtel is building NVIDIA's accelerated AI factories across Southeast Asia.—NVIDIA Earnings Call And Transcript Q1 2025 - May 22, 2024 (NVDA)
