As the U.S. tech darling continues its push into Southeast Asia, Nvidia plans to construct a $200 million artificial intelligence center in Indonesia in collaboration with the country’s largest telecom company, Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison.
The new facility will support local human resources, digital talent, and telecommunications infrastructure. It will be headquartered in Surakarta, in the province of Central Java, according to Indonesia’s Minister of Communication and Information Technology, Budi Arie Setiadi.
Both Nvidia and Indosat declined to comment when asked for their thoughts on the situation.
Nvidia’s Blackwell next-generation chip architecture would be integrated into Indosat’s infrastructure, the company said last month, with the aim of “propelling Indonesia into a new era of sovereign AI and technological advancement.”
Following the merger of Ooredoo from Qatar and CK Hutchison from Hong Kong in 2022, Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison became the second-largest mobile telecom in Indonesia.
Due to the region’s booming data demand brought on by the expanding digital economy, Nvidia is making a bigger push into Southeast Asia this year, as seen by its increased presence in Indonesia.
Singtel, a Singaporean telco company, announced in January that it would be partnering with Nvidia to implement artificial intelligence capabilities in its data centers located throughout Southeast Asia.
Singtel stated in March that by this year, companies in the area will have access to Nvidia’s state-of-the-art AI computing capability through the program, negating the need for clients to finance and maintain their own pricey data center equipment.
For Nvidia, Southeast Asia has proven to be a significant source of revenue. Singapore accounted for almost 15%, or $2.7 billion, of the company’s sales for the quarter that ended in October, according to a filing made with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission last year.
In terms of sales that quarter, Singapore lagged behind the U.S., which brought in 34.77% of Nvidia revenue, Taiwan (23.91%), China (22.24%), and Hong Kong.
The tiny nation-state’s sales for the quarter increased by 404.1% over the $562 million it brought in during the same period last year, surpassing Nvidia’s overall revenue growth and positioning it as the company’s fourth largest market.
Nvidia’s most recent spectacular quarterly earnings report revealed that the company made $18.40 billion mostly from data centers thanks to the worldwide AI frenzy.
