Significant step forward to turn Viet Nam into regional tech hub: The Diplomat

Website thediplomat.com has recently run an article highlighting that last year, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang said that he wanted to make Viet Nam the AI chipmaker's "second home."

The agreement, which was signed last week in Ha Noi in the presence of Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh and visiting NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, will involve the expansion of an AI data center owned by the Vietnamese military-owned Viettel Group, which already uses Nvidia technology.

NVIDIA also said it has acquired healthcare startup VinBrain, a unit of the prominent Vietnamese conglomerate Vingroup.

While neither side revealed the value of the deal, which Huang and Pham later toasted with glasses of bia hoi at a Ha Noi restaurant, it represents a robust vote of confidence in Viet Nam's future as a regional tech hub by one of the world's leading AI players, the article noted.

In a statement yesterday, NVIDIA expressed "confidence in the country's bright artificial intelligence future." Huang was quoted in the statement as praising Viet Nam's "vibrant ecosystem of researchers, startups, and enterprise organizations."

Nvidia has been eyeing investments in Viet Nam for some time. Visiting Ha Noi late last year, Huang said that his firm was committed to investing in Viet Nam and making the country its "second home."

In particular, it said it planned to expand its partnerships with Viet Nam's top tech firms and support the country in training talent for developing AI and digital infrastructure.

Last year, NVIDIA began collaborating with FPT Smart Cloud–its first Vietnamese cloud partner. In April, FPT announced that it and NVIDIA would build a US$200 million AI "factory" using NVIDIA's graphic chip and software./.