Vietnam and chipmaker Nvidia have signed an agreement to establish an artificial intelligence (AI) research and development center in the country, marking a significant step forward in Vietnam’s plans to become a regional technology hub.
The agreement, which was signed yesterday in Hanoi in the presence of Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh and the visit of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, will involve the expansion of an AI data center owned by the Vietnamese military group Viettel, which already uses Nvidia technology. Nvidia also announced that it had acquired healthcare startup VinBrain, a unit of the famous Vietnamese conglomerate Vingroup.
Speaking at yesterday’s signing ceremony, Investment Minister Nguyen Chi Dung said the R&D center would contribute to the development of advanced AI in the country, Bloomberg reported. reported.
“Nvidia’s support in the field of AI will not only help Vietnam achieve its development goals in the high-tech industry in general and in the field of AI in particular, but will also contribute to making “the entire Southeast Asian region is a destination for innovation,” Dung said. said.
Although neither party revealed the value of the deal, which Huang and Chinh later carried with glasses of alcohol. bia hoi in a Hanoi restaurant, it represents a strong vote of confidence in Vietnam’s future as a regional technology hub by one of the world’s leading AI players. In a statement yesterdayNvidia expressed “confidence in the country’s bright future in artificial intelligence.” Huang was quoted in the statement praising Vietnam’s “vibrant ecosystem of researchers, startups and business organizations.”
According to ReutersChinh said AI would help boost economic growth and facilitate Vietnam’s green transition. “We want to conquer not only AI, but also space and the ocean,” Chinh said. “AI will transform the sun, wind and waves into clean energy for us.”
Nvidia has been considering investing in Vietnam for some time. Visiting Hanoi late last year, Huang said his company was committed invest in Vietnam and make the country your “second home”. In particular, he announced plans to expand partnerships with Vietnam’s largest technology companies and support the country in training talents for the development of AI and digital infrastructure.
Last year, Nvidia began collaborating with FPT Smart Cloud, its first Vietnamese cloud partner. In April, FPT announcement that it and Nvidia would build a $200 million AI “factory” using Nvidia’s graphics chip and software.
All of these activities are part of Nvidia’s broader strategy in Southeast Asia, where demand for data services has increased due to its booming digital economy. According to a recent reportthis represented $263 billion in 2023, compared to just $31 billion in 2015.
Huang traveled to Hanoi shortly after a visit to Thailand on Tuesday, where he met Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra and agreed to strengthen cooperation with his country, including helping it develop its own AI infrastructure.
In January 2023, Singapore telecommunications company Singtel announced a partnership with Nvidia which aimed to deploy AI capabilities in its data centers in Southeast Asia. In December 2023, during the same trip that took Huang to Vietnam, he announced a $4.3 billion deal developing Malaysia’s AI infrastructure in Malaysia, in partnership with local conglomerate YTL. The deal will see both parties build supercomputers using Nvidia AI chips, while YTL will use Nvidia’s AI cloud computing platform to create a large language model in Malay. Then, in April of this year, Nvidia announced plans to build a 200 million dollars AI center in Indonesia in partnership with local telecommunications giant Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison.
This focus reflects the growing importance of foreign technology companies from Southeast Asia, a region with a young, mobile and tech-savvy population, both as a manufacturing hub and a market for technology products. The region is also attractive to Western companies looking for ways to reduce their dependence on China, as geopolitical tensions with the United States continue to escalate.
This year, the CEOs of US tech giants Apple and Microsoft also toured Southeast Asia, announcing billions of dollars in investments, including in data centers to support the expansion of data services. ‘AI.