Taiga Cloud, a Northern Data Group company, announce an additional ?330 Million investment to power Europe's largest Generative AI Cloud

• Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) will supply Taiga Cloud with HPE Cray XD supercomputers equipped with NVIDIA H100 GPU Tensor Core GPUs, worth ?330 million
• Taiga Cloud will run the HPE Cray XD supercomputers in hi-tech, carbon-neutral facilities to meet AI performance demands with sustainable computing
• This follows a recent ?400 million investment in over 10,000 NVIDIA H100 GPUs, giving Taiga Cloud ownership of Europe's largest cluster of NVIDIA H100 and A100 Tensor Core GPUs
• Taiga Cloud's growth is also accelerated through HPE's Partner Ready Vantage Program

FRANKFURT, Germany, Nov. 29, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Taiga Cloud, a Northern Data Group company, Europe's first and largest Generative AI Cloud Service Provider (CSP), has announced it is working with Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) to power cloud services using HPE Cray XD supercomputers, equipped with NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPUs, that will support generative AI and other large AI initiatives for Taiga Cloud's customers.

The new investment, of more than ?330 million, includes 384 cabinets of HPE Cray XD supercomputers with approximately 8,200 NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPUs. Taiga Cloud's customers will have access to purpose-built HPE technology for generative AI innovations that deliver the scale and performance of a supercomputer required for a growing market of compute-intensive AI workloads. HPE Cray supercomputers are built for speed, computational performance and energy efficiency and to date, the company has built six of the world's top 10 most energy efficient supercomputers.

Taiga Cloud's entire Generative AI Cloud is 100% carbon-neutral, powered and cooled with Power Usage Effectiveness ratios (PUEs) of less than 1.2. Housing these islands of GPUs across its European, clean-energy-powered data center estate, Taiga Cloud offers high-speed, low latency and data-sovereign compute power along with helping its customers to meet their ESG objectives.

This investment follows a recent purchase of over 10,000 NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPUs, at a total cost of approximately ?400 million in September 2023.

The expansion of the relationship with HPE marks a major milestone for Taiga Cloud in becoming Europe's leading Generative AI Cloud Service Provider. This large-scale solution will be deployed in early 2024 ? further bolstering Taiga's CSP offering. Taiga will further be supported through HPE's Partner Ready Vantage Program that provides select partners with IP, tools, and resources to further enable customer success and business growth.

In total, Taiga Cloud will have access to over 18,000 NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPUs, at a total purchase price of approximately ?730 million. This positions Taiga Cloud as Europe's largest independent Cloud Service Provider of NVIDIA hardware, which will provide access to over 24,500 NVIDIA H100, A100, and NVIDIA RTX A6000 GPUs, connected using NVIDIA BlueField DPUs and the NVIDIA Quantum-2 InfiniBand platform. In total, enabling Taiga to offer unrivalled compute power to the market.

Taiga Cloud's Cloud Service offering is purpose-built for training, tuning and inferencing Generative AI models. They are configuring its H100 and A100 islands in the most optimized way, with Bluefield DPU-enabled management and high-bandwidth, low- latency NVIDIA Quantum-2 InfiniBand interconnectivity. These technical efficiencies directly translate into significant energy efficiencies when training, tuning and inferencing LLMs.

Customers can pre-register their interest in Taiga Cloud's NVIDIA H100 GPUs, with access going live before the end of 2023.

Karl Havard, Managing Director, Taiga Cloud commented:

"Taiga and HPE share similar beliefs and values, which are aligned to democratizing access to cutting-edge sustainable Generative AI technology. We understand that AI workloads require purpose-built AI-native architecture where hundreds and even thousands of nodes work together in concert to support a single workload. To put it simply; at Taiga we understand technically and morally what is required to power the next generation of ethical and sustainable AI innovation. That is why we have partnered with and invested in trusted technology leaders. Our continued work with HPE and NVIDIA further positions us to meet our primary goal of empowering and enabling the most innovative organizations to bring their best ideas, rapidly and ethically, to life."

Jay Puri, NVIDIA's EVP, Worldwide Field Operations commented:

"The increasing demand for generative AI cloud services in Europe is driven by innovation from organizations building and deploying AI-powered solutions. Taiga Cloud's offering of NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPUs will help meet that demand, as it continues to expand its generative AI cloud offering."

 Suresh Babu, SVP & GM, HPC & AI GTM, HPE commented:

"We are proud to partner with Taiga Cloud to provide an AI-native architecture, which includes supercomputing to scale training efficiently, to support Europe's growing initiatives in generative AI. Together, our collaboration will fuel AI innovation by making HPE Cray XD supercomputers accessible through Taiga Cloud's AI cloud service that runs on 100% renewable energy."

About Taiga Cloud:

Taiga Cloud is Europe's first and largest Generative AI Cloud Service Provider. Part of Northern Data Group, they provide a flexible, secure and compliant cloud-based ultra-fast GPU Network, powered by the latest generation of NVIDIA hardware to meet organisations' most ambitious compute needs. High-intensity large-scale processing power is crucial for accelerating Generative AI models and research which will deliver a new era of technological breakthroughs. Taiga's energy-efficient Cloud is powered by Europe's largest cluster of NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core and H100 Tensor Core GPUs, helping enable organisations to accelerate AI and ML innovation on demand, with technology that is fully scalable and up and running within an hour.

About Northern Data Group:

Northern Data Group (ETR: NB2) is a provider of energy-efficient High Performance Computing (HPC) infrastructure to businesses and research institutions, utilising GPU- and ASIC-based solutions. Our flexible compute power fuels innovation in our three core business divisions: Taiga Cloud, Ardent Data Centers, and Peak Mining. Through our HPC infrastructure, we pioneer ambitious computing innovation that drives progress in the AI, ML and Generative AI industries. Our close collaboration with industry-leading manufacturers including Gigabyte, AMD, and NVIDIA is fundamental to the acceleration of innovation across sectors including life sciences, financial services and energy.