How Nvidia’s newer, pricier chips will shape India’s data centre ambition

India opportunity

Nvidia’s technology has seen widespread adoption among Tata Sons and Larsen & Toubro Ltd. Its chips also account for over 85% of the common compute infrastructure that the ministry of electronics and IT (Meity)’s India AI Mission has built. All of this lends ground for Nvidia’s new chips to increase the company’s market share in the country.

The key would be the cost of Nvidia’s new chips, according to Kashyap Kompella, founder of tech analysis firm RPA2AI Research.

“Nvidia’s new chips always come in at a significantly higher price point over older ones. This means that the new chips alone may not make a huge splash for Nvidia when it comes to increasing its India revenue pie, and only a limited volume of cutting-edge facilities handling high-volume AI workloads will adopt them,” said Kompella. “The real growth for Nvidia will come in India as the local data centre market expands, and low-intensity AI tasks for general purposes adopt older-generation GPUs for mass AI applications.”

According to Kompella, Nvidia’s key expansion phase is likely to come through Sarvam’s inclusion in the Nemotron coalition and any future role that India’s IT services industry will play.

“We haven’t seen IT services firms featured in Nvidia’s keynote or announcements so far,” he said. “Nvidia’s physical AI play may increase the role that India currently plays for the chipmaker, which remains to be seen over the next two days.”

Yes, costs will not be the only factor shaping demand for Nvidia’s chips in India.

India “will become important, but not because affordability suddenly unlocks demand overnight”, said Gogia of Greyhound.

“Enterprises across sectors in India are actively exploring AI infrastructure options, but most are still in controlled experimentation phases. There is strong intent, but limited production-scale deployment outside of a few sectors,” said Gogia. “Enterprise buyers are increasingly shifting toward domestic data centres due to latency, compliance, and power economics, but they remain cautious on large capital commitments without clear returns on investments.”

Nvidia’s own roadmap places the availability of these next-generation systems in a future window, he said. “That naturally aligns with India’s infrastructure buildout timeline, which means that India will not lag, even if it does not leapfrog instantly.”

Gartner’s Verma said the newer chips will likely sell in smaller volumes even when they come in two to three years from now, and only for cutting-edge use cases. “This won’t make a large volume impact, although some cutting-edge data centres run especially by the US-based Big Tech firms will likely license Nvidia’s latest chips.”