Interestingly,
Raja Koduri's connection to the world of movies predates his startup. He's been
an investor and advisor to Makuta, a company that received the national award
for visual effects in 2012 for the Telugu fantasy film "Eega."
Notably, its director, SS Rajamouli, gained worldwide acclaim for
"RRR" last year, and Rajamouli happens to be Koduri's cousin.
However, Raja
Koduri believes that the real potential goes beyond the film industry. He using
AI to benefit remote areas in India by establishing data centers within a
100-km radius. Additionally, he's determined to find ways to develop AI without
relying on Nvidia's chips.
In a recent
interview with our Editor, Koduri shed light on various aspects of his venture
and the tech landscape:
Q: You
started an AI company after exiting Intel. What is Mihira AI all about?
Raja Koduri says
“We want to harness the power of AI to make every artist a super-artist. If we
can train thousands of artists across India on the new tools, we can create
visual spectacles that are 10 times bigger than Game of Thrones. And do it
within reasonable budgets. Avatar cost around $400 million. The challenge is to
make it in $10 million with the help of AI”.
Q: How
much of the tech development will be in India?
Koduri says “The
majority of our workforce will be in India, but we have offices in America and
in Singapore as well. Over 80 percent of our workforce will be in India. We
want to establish facilities even in remote small towns of India. But to do
that, you need computing infrastructure, data center infrastructure. So, we're
also investing in data centers in India”.
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Q: Won’t
setting up that many data centers cost hundreds of billions of dollars? Is it
really feasible for India?
Koduri says to
our knowledgeily Editor that “We can make it happen. With all the manufacturing
in India, we can bring the cost down to a few billion dollars. If you don’t
have a goal in mind, you don’t create technology. Today, it might cost, say,
$300 billion. You need to then ask what needs to be done to bring it down to a
few tens of billions. The computing power inside an iPhone is what
supercomputers had in 2005 and cost millions of dollars. Now, it sits inside my
pocket and costs $1,000. Humans can be very creative if the right targets and goals
are set”.
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Q: India
doesn’t have a lot of money to offer. How do we attract the best chip and AI
engineers to come back home?
Koduri says “I
don't think money gets the talent. I think the collective passion to build
products from India is the key. And there has to be an ecosystem, which is the
reason why the US is where it is. It has taken everyone decades to build out an
ecosystem — be it the US, China, Taiwan, or Japan. I think India’s time has
come”.
Q: Most
chip design startups in India end up as service companies rather than building
intellectual property-based products. How can this be corrected?
Koduri talked
with our Editor and says “We need to aspire to do fundamental IP development in
India, not just services. I think it will certainly happen. How do you create a
new IP? You do it because you are solving somebody’s problem. Now, to be able
to know what your problem is and build a product for that, I need access to
you. So, that end-user perspective is needed in India. A lot of people will
come and say, ‘I will help you build a graphics processing unit (GPU).’ They
need to say, ‘Hey, I will build the GPU for you.’ That’s the key difference. We
need startups to be building for the end user, be it in gaming, AI, cell
phones, or other domains. I have no doubt it will happen in India”.
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Q: Are you
doing angel investments in chip startups?
Koduri says “I
have been talking to several and already advising half a dozen. There’s one
called Infinipack that has recently started, and I am encouraging them to build
a world-class packaging design, and not packaging services, company from India”.
Q: Are you
going to create a foundational large-language model at Mihira AI?
Koduri says “We
will look at whether we should build a foundational model for India. Once we
have enough data center infrastructure here, that is an easy decision to train
a model. Creating a foundational model today is about a lot of computing power
and money. There is no fundamental innovation. If we can have a 1000-GPU data
center in India, we can build a foundational model here. The infrastructure is
important”.
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Q: As
Mihira AI will work with movie studios, is there a chance you might raise money
from an HBO, Netflix, or even a studio in India? Can we expect you to be
working with your cousin Rajamouli any time soon?
Koduri said to Editor that "We
are working with top creators, including SS Rajamouli. But our goal is not just
movies. We love movies, but that is not where the money is. Movies are where
the fun is. The money is in manufacturing, the money is in healthcare and the
money is in sports. Do you know how much Apple spends on each of their iPhone
launches? That money is much more than a lot of movie budgets. India has a huge
workforce that needs to be trained, but doing so inside a chip fab or even a
factory is very expensive. This can be done with AI-based virtual reality".
Q: Where
are you on the debate about AI killing jobs?
Koduri says that "In
the future, you will have to do your own electricity repairs and plumbing. They
will be sitting in a nice resort and guiding you virtually how to do it. The
soft-knowledge people like us will be at the bottom of the food chain in the
post-AI era. The hard physical labor knowledge people will be at the top.
That's my prediction of what's going to happen. It's controversial, but that's
what I feel. ChatGPT is smarter than any of us. So just learning a whole bunch
of books by heart is not valuable anymore".
Thanks for reading,
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