The Race to Build AI Infrastructure: Who Will Power the Next Tech Revolution?

April 25, 2024 - Baystreet.ca


VANCOUVER – USA News Group – The economic impact of the AI revolution is growing at a hyperbolic rate, with analysts at PWC projecting AI’s potential contribution to the global economy to hit US$15.7 trillion by 2030. Behind the scenes powering this shift are many players building out the infrastructure to provide the supercomputing power necessary to fulfill AI’s soaring demand, which alone is projected to consume enough energy to power a small country. While analysts are projecting the Computing Power Market to surpass US$81.3 billion by 2032, the biggest logistical threat to the AI wave are shortages and rising prices of GPUs, the chips that are used to propel generative AI programs. The current leader in providing GPUs is chipmaking giant NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ: NVDA), however there are other important players moving their pieces into place to also make an impact, including Alset Capital Inc. (TSXV: KSUM), VERSES AI Inc. (NEO: VERS) (OTCQB: VRSSF), Super Micro Computer Inc. (NASDAQ: SMCI), and SAP SE (NYSE: SAP).

One of the most sought after GPUs in the AI arms race is the Hopper H100 AI GPU from NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ: NVDA), which currently has a 2-3 month wait time to deliver orders. Meanwhile speculators are buying up the H100s and driving the price beyond $40,000 per unit, creating advantages in the market for entities with contracts in place to buy these GPUs faster, and cheaper than competitors.

This is precisely the advantage that Alset Capital Inc. (TSXV: KSUM) has captured through its 49%-owned investee company Cedarcross International Technologies Inc., which offers access to the world’s fastest AI servers, powered by NVIDIA’s H100 HGX Servers. Recently, Alset announced that Cedarcross has just entered into a two-year AI Computing leasing agreement, which is expected to generate approximately C$5.5 million in revenue, and comes with a gross margin of approximately 80% over the contract’s duration.

Under the agreement, Cedarcross is set to supply ~700,000 compute hours each year, amounting to approximately 1.4 million AI compute hours over the term of the contract. The deal, struck with a respected, independent third-party enterprise client highlights Cedarcross's expanding presence and expertise in the AI infrastructure sector, and its increasing value for Alset. This also follows up on other distribution agreements from earlier in the month, including one that will bring in C$2.3 million in gross revenue, and another that comes with a supply agreement that permits Cedarcross to purchase Nvidia high-performance computing servers from Super Micro Computer Inc. (NASDAQ: SMCI), through its partnership with Earthmade Computing.

"We are very enthusiastic about Cedarcross's strategic collaboration with Earthmade Computing to purchase Nvidia HPC servers directly from Super Micro Computer, Inc.," said Morgan Good, CEO of Alset regarding the supply agreement. "This Agreement not only ensures the seamless procurement of vital AI computing hardware but also solidifies Cedarcross's competitive positioning in the industry."

With these two recent announcements, Cedarcross has solidified agreements poised to generate a cumulative expected gross revenue of C$7.8M year to date. These agreements span across its compute leasing business and its high-performance computing distribution vertical, marking significant milestones in Cedarcross's growth trajectory, and delivering early solid returns for Alset’s investments in the process.

Setting up intelligent software systems for potential clients, VERSES AI Inc. (NEO: VERS) (OTCQB: VRSSF) has announced at least six Beta engagements of its flagship GeniusTM platform. These engagements include a series of potentially significant clients, an agreement with an yet-to-be-named national US pharmacy retailer and a partnership involving potential smart city projects in Abu Dhabi.

“For an early-stage company we have so much going on, especially in the last few months,” said Gabriel René, founder and CEO of VERSES. Additionally, VERSES has received over 3,700 sign ups for the limited private preview of its Genius™ Public Beta program. To date, the company has grown to around 100 employees across 60 remote locations, and has raised $65 million.

VERSES has also made a bold claim that the machine-learning methods behind ChatGPT and the rest of AI's advances for the past 20 years will never get the industry to artificial general intelligence (AGI)—a human level of AI that can reason and learn in new ways. The company says it will release the public beta version of GeniusTM later this summer.

As part of its mission to help every business run as an intelligent, sustainable enterprise, enterprise application software provider SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) recently signed a partnership expansion with NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ: NVDA) to benefit SAP’s portfolio of cloud solutions and applications. As per the deal, the two companies are collaborating to build and deliver SAP Business AI to include scalable, business-specific generative AI capabilities across SAP’s offerings, providing instant access to a broad range of large language models (LLMs). Together, SAP and NVIDIA plan to make the new integrated capabilities available before the end of the year, as SAP will use NVIDIA’s generative AI foundry service to fine-tune the LLMs with new NVIDIA NIMTM microservices.

"Strategic technology partnerships, like the one between SAP and NVIDIA, are at the core of our strategy to invest in technology that maximizes the potential and opportunity of AI for business," said Christian Klein, CEO and Member of the Executive Board of SAP SE. "NVIDIA's expertise in delivering AI capabilities at scale will help SAP accelerate the pace of transformation and better serve our customers in the cloud."

Leading innovator in enterprise, cloud, AI, and 5G Telco/Edge IT infrastructure Super Micro Computer Inc. (NASDAQ: SMCI) recently announced its upcoming X14 server portfolio that’s set to have future support for the Intel Xeon 6 processor. The new system will combine Supermicro’s Building Block Architecture, rack plug-and-play and liquid cooling solutions, while also including the Intel Xeon 6 processor’s help to deliver optimized solutions for any workload at any scale, with superior performance and efficiency.

"Supermicro leads the industry in the design and delivery of a wide range of application optimized solutions, and our new X14 systems with the upcoming Intel Xeon 6 processors will further expand our already broad range of offerings," said Charles Liang, president and CEO of Supermicro. "With our production capacity of 5,000 racks per month globally, including 1,350 liquid-cooled 100 kW racks, and lead time as short as 2 weeks, Supermicro is unmatched in its ability to design, build, validate, and deliver fully customized, workload-optimized rack-scale solutions to our customers, including the most advanced AI hardware available today."

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