🏃♂️Indian Product Companies Join the GPU Race
India's growing appetite for GPUs, driven by AI applications, has shifted the conversation of GPU shortage to India.
In Today's Siam Sixers
🏃♂️ Indian Product Companies Join Race for GPUs
📺 Video: The conspiracy to make AI seem harder than it is
💡 Essential Reading for Product Leaders
🎧 Podcast: Craft a compelling sales pitch for your product
💰 StartupTN launches Tanfund
😂 An Enterpreneur’s Circus Act
1️⃣Indian Product Companies Join Race for GPUs
India's growing appetite for GPUs, driven by AI applications, has shifted the conversation of GPU shortage to India. As per reports, Indian SaaS behemoths like Zoho are in talks with NVIDIA for GPU procurement. Zoho founder and CEO, Sridhar Vembu has emphasized that there is a six-month wait time for GPUs. This situation reflects the global GPU shortage, which has impacted various industries.
🌏India as NVIDIA's Choice: India, despite being affected by global supply chain issues, holds a special place in NVIDIA's plans. Jensen Huang, NVIDIA's CEO, predicts that India will receive thousands of GPUs to support infrastructure development. This includes cutting-edge supercomputers designed to accelerate AI advancements. With geopolitical conflicts impacting chip exports to China, India has become a significant market for GPU manufacturers.
🤝 Indian Tech Giants and NVIDIA: Zoho joins a growing list of Indian tech giants collaborating with NVIDIA. Reliance Industries, TCS, and Infosys have all announced strategic partnerships with NVIDIA to enhance AI capabilities. These partnerships are aimed at serving millions of customers with AI applications and supporting Indian researchers and startups.
🔮 Zoho's AI Expansion: Zoho, known for its SaaS solutions, is aggressively venturing into AI integration. The company has already launched AI-assisted products and is developing domain-specific language models. Zoho's investment in AI is driven by the need for large computing power, making GPU procurement crucial.
🔬 OpenAI's Pursuit of Custom Chips: Meanwhile, OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, is considering the development of its own AI chips to address the GPU shortage and cost issues. This move puts OpenAI among a select group of tech giants seeking to design custom chips. However, it's a significant and costly undertaking with no guaranteed success. An acquisition could expedite the process, as seen with Amazon's Annapurna Labs acquisition.
👾 Meta's Struggles with Custom Chips: It's worth noting that developing custom chips is no easy task, as demonstrated by Meta's issues with its custom chip efforts. Creating custom AI chips is a complex and costly endeavor, and even if pursued, success is not guaranteed. For product founders, this highlights the importance of careful strategic planning and diversification of suppliers while considering custom chip development as a long-term solution.
GPU shortage has a significant impact on product companies in the age of AI, affecting their development timelines, costs, and competitive position. To mitigate these challenges, companies need to be proactive in seeking alternative solutions, diversifying suppliers, and exploring partnerships to ensure a steady supply of critical hardware for their AI-driven products and services.
Also Read
📰OpenAI is exploring making its own AI chips
📰Google Should Bring Tensor Chip Plant In India In 3 years: Indian IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw
2️⃣Video: The conspiracy to make AI seem harder than it is
In this video, Gustav Söderström, the CPTO of Spotify discusses the conspiracy to make AI seem harder than it is and the importance of demystifying it. He explains that while implementing AI can be complicated, the theory behind it is simple and can be understood without extensive mathematical knowledge.
Söderström introduces the concept of large language models (LLMs) and explains how they work by assigning numbers to words in the English dictionary. He also discusses the importance of supervised fine-tuning and reinforcement learning in improving the language model's performance. Söderström highlights the surprising scale, speed, and creativity of LLMs, and he explains how word vectors can be used to represent and manipulate words mathematically. He concludes by highlighting the practical applications of AI, such as recommendation systems in platforms like Spotify.
3️⃣Essential Reading for Product Teams and Leaders
Here are the latest articles from Siam Computing and the ProdWrks publication that I feel will be useful for product teams and product leaders.
🤖Enterprises Embrace Hybrid AI Approach to Scale Generative AI Impact
🏥The Transformative Power of LLM Chatbots in Indian Healthcare
📱Is the Indus App Store by PhonePe a Viable Alternative to the Google
🌐Understanding Web Rendering with SSR, CSR, and SSG
💰EmbedUR’s 500Cr Bet to Transform Chennai to Embedded Systems Hub
🛒Discovery Gap in E-Retail: Reimagining the Online Shopping Experience with Chatbots & LLM
🆔Demystifying India Stack: Part 4 – Aadhaar – India’s National Identity Program
📖The Importance of Storytelling Skills for Managers
🛠️Tips & Tricks for Optimizing Laravel Performance for RestAPI with MySQL
🐱The Art of Strategic Feature Adoption and Avoiding Copycat Pitfalls
4️⃣Podcast: Craft a compelling sales pitch for your product
In this podcast, April Dunford, a speaker, mentor, podcaster, and best-selling author of the book Sales Pitch, goes deep into the art of effective pitching and selling. Dunford gives a step-by-step guide and specific framework she’s used to successfully pitch products at companies like Google, IBM, Postman, and Epic Games.
Key Segments in the Podcast
Tactical advice on pitch creation and testing
Real-life examples of companies transforming their narratives into successful sales strategies
How to combat customer inaction
How to become your prospect’s guide in their buying journey
The importance of differentiated value
Marketing’s role in the process
Avoiding FOMO as a sales strategy
Tips for handling objections
📰Also Read: How can Startups Get Enterprise Clients? – Insights from Rohan Joshi, founder of Wolken Software
5️⃣StartupTN launches Tanfund
StartupTN, the Startup Funding Platform of Tamil Nadu has launched TANFUND (www.tanfund.in) - a web portal that’s an integral part of the Tamil Nadu Global Investor Meet, to be held on January 7 & 8, 2024.
TANFUND will facilitate investments in innovative and scalable Tamil Nadu-based Startups by offering an online matchmaking engine between Startups and Investors. This platform will connect Startup founders with a wide spectrum of funding partners, including Venture Capital, Private Equity, Venture Debt funds, Angel Networks, Family Offices, Revenue-based Financing, Government Investment Agencies, and Accelerators.
Startups will be provided with mentorship support, aided in understanding the multifaceted world of Startup financing, and in refining their pitches. For investors, the platform simplifies their search and due diligence processes.
6️⃣An Enterpreneur’s Circus Act
I hope you enjoyed this week's curated stories and resources. Check your inbox again next week, or read previous editions of Siam Sixers for more insights. To get instant updates, connect with me on LinkedIn.
Cheers!
Khuze Siam
Founder: Siam Computing & ProdWrks