Cerebras plans humongous AI supercomputer in India backed by UAE
The Register
February 20, 2026
AI-Generated Deep Dive Summary
Cerebras Systems, a leading developer of AI accelerators, is set to deploy a groundbreaking supercomputing cluster in India, capable of delivering up to 8 exaFLOPS of AI compute power. This ambitious project is a result of collaboration between the UAE's Mohamed Bin Zayed University of AI (MBZUAI) and India's Center for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), with G42, a UAE-based cloud provider, handling the deployment. The supercomputer will be made available to Indian universities, startups, and small businesses, marking a significant step forward in the nation's AI capabilities.
The system will utilize Cerebras' WSE-3 wafer-scale accelerators, each capable of 125 petaFLOPS of sparse 16-bit floating-point performance. Unlike traditional GPUs that rely on expensive high-bandwidth memory (HBM), these accelerators use fast on-chip SRAM, offering unparalleled memory bandwidth and efficiency. This approach has proven particularly effective for AI inference tasks, with Cerebras' hardware outperforming GPU-based systems by a significant margin.
G42's investment in the project underscores its commitment to building sovereign AI infrastructure, enabling nations to maintain data sovereignty and competitiveness in the global AI race. The supercomputer will operate under India's governance frameworks, ensuring all data remains within the country's borders. This initiative aligns with G42's broader strategy of helping countries develop locally tailored AI models, such as its recent release of the Nanda 87B model trained in Hindi and English.
The deployment comes amid growing competition in India's AI landscape. Earlier this week, AMD and Nvidia announced their own large-scale projects in the country, including Yotta's planned cluster of 20,000 Blackwell Ultra GPUs and Larsen and Toubro's giga-scale datacenter network. These developments highlight India's rapidly expanding AI ecosystem and its importance as a global hub for AI innovation.
As memory shortages persist and demand for high-performance AI infrastructure grows, Cerebras' unique approach to chip design positions it as a key player in the race for efficient and powerful AI computing. The Indian supercomputer project not only boosts the country's technological capabilities but also sets a precedent for other nations seeking to establish
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Originally published on The Register on 2/20/2026