Tata Communications is preparing to compete with US hyperscalers and Indian infrastructure players, such as the Reliance group, in the AI cloud platform space. The company plans to launch a full-stack AI cloud platform for developers, startups, enterprises, and foreign governments at globally competitive pricing, according to an ET report, which cited a top executive.
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Full-Stack AI Cloud Platform Launch
The company, which acquired Nvidia GPUs last year, is launching its "AI studio" next quarter. The platform will host a "model garden" of open-source large language models (LLMs), developer tools, security layers and full cloud functionalities, the report quoted Chief Executive AS Laxminaryanan as saying.
"We are also examining opportunities with closed-weight models companies (such as Anthropic) in future," he reportedly said. OpenAI has an exclusive partnership with Microsoft Azure.
According to the report, when asked about competition from large incumbents, Laxminaryanan said that being the biggest is not the goal in AI; being the best is.
Scalability and Competitive Pricing
"Of course, the platform will evolve, but we are aiming for better price-performance than some of the large companies. We are also building our GPU architecture in a way that is quickly scalable. If there is a demand I can double my GPUs tomorrow," he reportedly said.
The CEO emphasised that Tata Communications aims to offer competitive pricing by providing superior price-performance ratios compared to larger players. The platform is being designed for scalability, with the ability to rapidly increase GPU capacity if demand spikes. The company is also investing in both CPU and GPU cloud infrastructure and building capabilities for AI inferencing at the edge, for use cases like retail stores that require low-latency and minimal computing.
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"Enterprises will look at inferencing-at-the-edge, such as retail stores, as they start building AI use-cases. These require low latency and lesser compute. So we are building inferencing infrastructure to bring AI capabilities to the edge," he reportedly said.
Renewable Energy-Powered GPUs
According to the report, ST Telemedia, a Singapore-based data center company in which Tata Communications holds a minority stake, has deployed GPU clusters at its Chennai facility. In September 2024, STT revealed plans to invest USD 3.2 billion (Rs 26,000 crore) to increase its data center capacity in India by 550 megawatts (MW) over the next five to six years.
The executive also mentioned that 100 percent of the company's GPUs are powered by renewable energy, which will enable it to offer competitive pricing to customers.
