Nowadays, in response to the growing demand for digitalization in the Southeast Asia, NVIDIA plans to collaborate with the Indonesian telecommunications company Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison to establish a $200 million AI center, which is expected to be completed by the end of this year.

According to Budi Arie Setiadi, the Indonesian Minister of Communication and Information, the new center, named "Indonesia AI Nation," will be located in Surakarta, Central Java Province, and will strengthen local telecommunications infrastructure, human resources, and digital talent.

It is known that Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison is the second-largest mobile telecommunications company in Indonesia. Earlier, both of them announced the establishment of a partnership at a public event held in March this year, Indosat also plans to integrate NVIDIA's Blackwell chips into its infrastructure.

Indosat stated that the company's goal is to improve its technological infrastructure and provide human resources with necessary skills, but no further detail. Currently, Indosat is conducting deeper research into digital services, aiming to expand its business beyond telecommunications.

In fact, NVIDIA's expansion into Indonesia is part of the company's move into Southeast Asia.

In January this year, Singtel announced a partnership with NVIDIA to deploy AI functionalities in data centers across Southeast Asia. YTL Group in Malaysia, on the other hand, announced the launch of the country's first AI cloud, utilizing NVIDIA's Blackwell GPU for deployment.

Southeast Asia is a significant market for NVIDIA and a primary source of its revenue. According to a document from the U.S. SEC last year, approximately 15% of the company's revenue ($2.7bn) came from Singapore in the fiscal quarter ending in October of the previous year, with the data center business comprising a substantial portion of its revenue.

Although this proportion still lags behind that of the United States (34.77%) and China (Mainland 22.24%, Taiwan 23.91%), in that quarter, NVIDIA's revenue in Singapore grew by 404.1% year-on-year, surpassing the overall revenue growth rate of NVIDIA and becoming the company's fourth-largest market.

As of now, with a population exceeding 270 million, Indonesia is the most populous country in Southeast Asia. Nezar Patria, Deputy Minister of Communications and Information of Indonesia, described this collaboration as "strategic," with the ministry intending to engage in technology transfer, not only as users but also as participants, actively joining the development of AI regionally and globally.

Consulting firm Kearney predicts that by 2030, AI will contribute to a 10%-18% growth in Southeast Asia's GDP, potentially reaching $366bn, which is approximately one-third of the total ASEAN economic output.