InstaDeep and AI Hub announce collaboration to benefit Tunisian AI ecosystem

Technology-led partnership will drive even more innovation, creativity and technical and scientific advancements from the local AI and ML community.

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InstaDeep is delighted to announce they are making a world-class NVIDIA A100 DGX supercomputing server and on-site support team available at The AI Hub located at the DOT innovation hub in central Tunis, for the exclusive benefit of the Tunisian Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) ecosystem. This has been delivered in co-operation with the AI Hub: an alliance between the Ministry of Industry, Mines and Energy, the Ministry of Communication Technologies, and the Digital Transformation Program run by the German Association for International Cooperation (“GIZ”) in Tunisia. The aim of the AI Hub is to support the development of the AI national strategy and to ensure its implementation.

Kickstarting the Tunisian AI Ecosystem

The top-of-the-range DGX A100 includes eight A100 GPUs of 80GB memory, making it one of the world’s fastest and most powerful servers. Access to high-performance computing (HPC) capability is vital for local AI and ML entrepreneurs, startups, and academic and research institutions to train complex models and datasets, run detailed experiments, perform large scale analyses, and more. 

Until now, such HPC was previously completely out of reach to all but a few elite companies with purpose-built data centres of their own, but now Tunisians working on a Machine Learning project can apply to access this dedicated supercomputing power and accelerate AI innovation. 

Partnering for real impact

InstaDeep co-founder and CEO Karim Beguir announced the news on 3 November 2021 during an official launch at The DOT Digital Innovation Hub, alongside Rim Bejaoui, AI & Industry 4.0 Team Leader at GIZ Tunisia Digital Transformation and Kais Mejri, the General Director of Innovation & Technology Development at the Ministry of Industry, Mines and Energy. Reflecting on the announcement, Beguir said “Supporting the fast-growing AI ecosystem in Tunisia is a key priority for both InstaDeep and our partners at the AI Hub. We strongly feel that Tunisia must be part of global innovation in AI and we are honoured to be able to give back to the community in this way.  We can’t wait to see what breakthroughs and achievements will be delivered using the supercomputing capabilities made available by InstaDeep”.

Kais Mejri continued the sentiment: “We’re thrilled to see such powerful hardware being made available exclusively for the Tunisian AI community, and proud to work with InstaDeep to make the AI Hub and The DOT the national connection center for this generous initiative. We look forward to a successful and long-term collaboration supporting the deep tech ecosystem in Tunisia.”

On-site support

The server will be accessed via a managed connection service located at The DOT in Tunis. There will be a permanent workspace and team of experienced InstaDeep engineers and advisers available on-site, where users can get training and guidance to run projects, develop methodologies and best practices on their projects and compute requirements, as well as practical support to access and use the DGX A100. Users will simply be able to launch their experiments with commits directly from their registered github project, without any software or technical knowledge needed and get results faster than ever before.

The NVIDIA DGX A100 at a glance

  • 8x NVIDIA A100 GPUS
  • 80 Gigabyte Memory per GPU
  • 5 Petaflops at FP16 Precision
  • Cost > 500,000TND

>>>Download the full factsheet here: NVIDIA DGX A100 

Apply for the Programme here: Application for computing power from the InstaDeep | AI Hub collaboration

Playback of the live stream of the announcement

About InstaDeep

Founded in 2014, InstaDeep is an EMEA leader in decision-making AI products for the Enterprise, with headquarters in London, and offices in Paris, Tunis, Lagos, Dubai and Cape Town. The company was recently selected by CB Insights as one of the 100 most promising AI start-ups in the world for the second year running. The company is part of Intel’s AI Builders programme and recently qualified as an Elite-level service provider within the NVIDIA Partner Network (NPN). InstaDeep is one of only two companies in the EMEA region to earn this designation. www.instadeep.com 

About the AI Hub

The AI Hub is a partnership between the Ministry of Industry, Mines and Energy, the Ministry of Communication Technologies and the Digital Transformation Program run by the German Association for International Cooperation (“GIZ”) in Tunisia. Hosted at The Dot space, the AI ​​Hub supports the development and implementation of the national AI strategy.

About NVIDIA

NVIDIA’s (NASDAQ: NVDA) invention of the GPU in 1999 sparked the growth of the PC gaming market and has redefined modern computer graphics, high performance computing and artificial intelligence. The company’s pioneering work in accelerated computing and AI is reshaping trillion-dollar industries, such as transportation, healthcare and manufacturing, and fueling the growth of many others. More information at https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/

About The DOT

Launched in June 2021 in Tunis, The DOT aspires to be the first digital innovation hub in Tunisia. This ambition is driven by a group of institutions: besides the lead partner Smart Tunisia – a program designed to support the development of the digital sector in Tunisia – the Tunisian Development Foundation has provided the premises while the French (Expertise France) and German (GIZ) public cooperation agencies brought technical assistance and financial support. https://thedot.tn/