Nvidia boss Jensen Huang got a rock star reception at the AI Summit in Mumbai today. But his message wasn’t one the audience wanted to hear.
The godfather of chipmaking questioned India’s ambitions to develop its own semiconductor industry, saying it should build on its reputation as the world’s top software exporter instead.
“Why export the labor, and the software is built elsewhere?” Huang told reporters at the summit, when asked about the prospect of partnering with India on chip manufacturing. “Why not manufacture the intelligence here and export the intelligence?”
Huang said he had shared his thoughts the Indian prime minister himself, raising questions about the practicality of Narendra Modi’s “made in India” chips initiative. Ouch!
(The MONIIFY take on this: Nvidia is happy to continue working with TSMC, the Taiwanese semiconductor giant that’s its longstanding manufacturing partner and isn’t looking for an open relationship.)
India has no track record in chip-making and lacks the highly specialized engineers and equipment needed to get going. But it’s determined to get in on the semiconductor boom—and soon. Modi has been keen to develop the entire chip value chain in India and expects the Indian electronics sector to be worth $500 billion by 2030.
Last year, India greenlit semiconductor manufacturing projects worth $15.2 billion by firms including Tata Group, but work is yet get off the ground.
For context, it took TSMC and other Taiwanese giants literally decades, along with massive government support and billions in capital investment, to get where they are today.
So Huang’s skepticism isn’t that misplaced.
Aside from the expertise gap, India is already struggling to source enough water and electricity for its 1-billion-plus population. Those are basics for any manufacturing sector, but the exceptionally complicated business of making physical supercomputer chips? That is an energy suck on a different stratosphere.
So will India make progress with a few chip plants here and there? Probably, but it won’t be rivaling—or replacing—TSMC any time soon.
