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Singtel expands GPUaaS offering to Southeast Asia
Singapore telco teams up with the Bridge Alliance industry group to bring its GPU-as-a-Service to enterprises across Southeast Asia
Singapore telco Singtel has teamed up with the Bridge Alliance industry group to bring its GPU-as-a-Service (GPUaaS) to enterprises across Southeast Asia, expanding the reach of the service beyond its home market.
AIS, Maxis and Telkomsel are among the early adopters in the 35-member global alliance to cater to the growing demand for artificial intelligence (AI) compute in Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia respectively, having signalled their interest in the service.
At launch, Singtel’s GPUaaS will be powered by Nvidia H100 Tensor Core GPU-powered clusters. Singtel will also be among the first globally to launch Nvidia’s next-generation GB200 AI servers.
The service will be expanded to run in new AI-ready datacentres by Nxera, Singtel’s regional datacentre business, across Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia from mid-2025 onwards.
More GPU clusters will be added in the respective countries as GPU needs grow, while Bridge Alliance will assist its members to speed up their go-to-market strategies and drive the success of the GPUaaS offerings in local markets.
Singtel’s GPUaaS can also bring AI capabilities to the edge through its Paragon multi-edge compute platform. During trials with Singapore government agencies on the resort island of Sentosa, Singtel orchestrated the use of Paragon and Nvidia GPUs to support 5G use cases at scale.
“With more telcos deploying 5G network services, we see this real-time AI offering powered by GPUaaS at the 5G edge at low latencies as a key growth driver for their enterprise businesses,” said Bill Chang, CEO of Singtel’s Digital InfraCo unit.
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Chang noted that Singtel’s tie-up with Bridge Alliance and telcos in the region will “democratise and accelerate the use of AI” by enterprises across industries, giving them the tools to improve productivity and deliver business value.
Ong Geok Chwee, CEO of Bridge Alliance, said the collaboration validates the value of the alliance, which pools the collective capabilities of its members to drive regional initiatives and innovation, especially for companies with multinational operations.
Phupa Akavipat, acting chief enterprise business officer of AIS, noted that with AI being adopted by organisations in different industries in Thailand to accelerate business transformation, the GPUaaS offering will help them embrace and scale up the use of the technology.
AI adoption could contribute nearly $1tn to Southeast Asia’s economy by 2030 if the transformative power of the technology can be tapped to deliver value, according to Kearney, a management consulting firm.
A recent study commissioned by IBM, however, found that while organisations in Southeast Asia are engaging with AI, just 4% have reached a transformative level of AI maturity as they grapple with persistent challenges in talent, data and governance.
