IaaS provider commits $1B to build European AI Supercloud with Nvidia

UK-based infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) provider NexGen Cloud is committing an investment of $1 billion toward building its "AI Supercloud" in Europe. The company said it has already set aside $576 million in hardware orders with suppliers to support the project, which is scheduled to begin this month.

NexGen Cloud said the AI Supercloud will support the development and expansion of AI models and research for European technology companies and governments, and will fall within the purview of European privacy regulations.

The IaaS company is also taking a sustainable approach to the project by utilizing European data centers running on 100% renewable energy.

The AI Supercloud will include more than 20,000 NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPUs by June 2024. Organizations will be able to access the AI Supercloud via NexGen Cloud's Hyperstack platform, a Nvidia graphical processing unit (GPU) cloud platform.

Nvidia gets traction

"The AI Supercloud will empower businesses to gain competitive advantages in the next evolution of technology, all within the European jurisdiction and the data sovereignty and security that brings," said Chris Starkey, CEO of NexGen Cloud, in a statement. "Through our collaboration with Nvidia, we are going to deliver an AI Supercloud that will ensure that European enterprises can be globally competitive and ahead of competition."

Nvidia's GPUs for AI applications have been gaining traction as the telecom industry goes all in on AI – Nvidia's stock-market value has risen from $350 billion to $970 billion this year.

Light Reading's Iain Morris reported that Nvidia's meteoric rise comes as investors "have swallowed the story that companies will buy the chipmaker's graphical processing units (GPUs) to run a gamut of artificial intelligence (AI) applications, and just mentioning AI these days is enough to add a few billion dollars to your market cap."

However, Morris noted that supporting the economic case for deploying Nvidia's GPU's for AI could be difficult for some service providers: "The chipmaker's two-for-one AI and virtual RAN deal is unlikely to make sense to operators outside the most densely populated and fiber-rich cities."

Meanwhile, NexGen Cloud has partnered with Moore and Moore Investments Group (MMI) to assist in funding the European AI Supercloud project. The companies have created a dedicated fund for the AI Supercloud, which has also received investment from MMI's private investors.

"The Hyperstack AI Supercloud represents a powerful way to drive AI use, meeting compute demand, while also democratizing access to some of the most powerful GPU systems on the market," said John Moore, director of MMI, in a statement. "We believe firmly in the potential of this deployment and are excited to open up the opportunity in this venture to our investors."