Ex-Intel Chief Architect Considers Data Center Opportunities For an Indian AI Startup

Raja Koduri, the former chief architect of Intel Corp, is negotiating a contract with Hiranandani-backed data center company Yotta for his generative artificial intelligence venture, which he says will have a significant presence in India. Koduri stated that his unnamed company would partner with or acquire Yotta, which has data centers in the Indian cities of Bombay and Noida, in order to challenge Nvidia Corp's dominance in the digital movie and video game markets. The company will provide artificial intelligence (AI) tools to innovators including game designers and film industry employees, the Indian-American executive told Reuters in an interview.

Koduri, who has collaborated on nearly two dozen iterations of computer graphics chips, intends to construct local data centers to facilitate access to the vast computing power required for generative AI applications. Generative AI refers to technologies such as ChatGPT that can generate haikus, essays, and images based on given prompts. However, the plan for the data center will face obstacles from unstable electricity, a lack of qualified labor, and the absence of defined policy from state and federal governments.

The southern states of Karnataka and Telangana have been "extremely supportive," he said, adding that electricity subsidies will be crucial because data centers are energy hogs. Koduri did not divulge the number of employees his company would hire, but he did say that "a ton" of workers would be recruited from the southern cities of Bengaluru and Hyderabad. In addition, he is joining the board of AI chip startup Tenstorrent, managed by veteran chip architect Jim Keller, who oversaw the design of Tesla's self-driving processor in 2016.