Cassava Technologies may invest as much as US$720-million (R14-billion) in Africa’s first artificial intelligence factory that will be built by Nvidia.

The pan-African technology firm founded by Zimbabwean telecommunications tycoon Strive Masiyiwa plans to deploy accelerated computing and AI software from the US company in South Africa, Egypt, Nigeria, Kenya and Morocco.

“If we don’t take the first step to deploy our own capital, however limited it maybe, we can’t expect others to go first,” Hardy Pemhiwa, the president and group CEO at Cassava, said in an interview. “This is about ensuring that Africa doesn’t get left behind.”Cassava’s African AI factory will target researchers in universities, start-ups and developers in various sectors

South Africa will be the first recipient of the AI-powered data centres with 3 000 graphic processing units, or GPUs, from Nvidia deployed by June.

“We intend over the next three to four years to install 12 000 of them across Africa, starting with the 3 000 in South Africa,” Pemhiwa said. “The GPUs themselves are like laying fibre, the investment is really about building the whole AI ecosystem.”

A single GPU costs between $45 000 and $60 000.

Nvidia, which controls 93% of the GPU market globally, was a natural choice for Cassava as they “are market leaders”, according to Pemhiwa. Another attraction is Cassava can sell excess capacity to other Nvidia cloud clients wherever they are in the world.

Target

“There isn’t anybody that has built an ecosystem beyond GPUs and the AI factory is basically the main thing that Nvidia does throughout the world,” Pemhiwa added.

Cassava’s African AI factory will target researchers in universities, start-ups and developers in various sectors including healthcare, fintech and governments.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has pulled back on data centre projects around the world, suggesting the company is taking a harder look at its plans to build the server farms powering AI and the cloud. 

Source: TechCentral