Micron Global CBO Compares AI to Discovery of Fire, Highlights Its Transformative Potential

AI is as foundational as discovery of fire, says Micron global CBO

Micron global chief business officer Sumit Sadana told ET in an interview that the semiconductor company hopes to kickstart its India unit by 2025. He also talked about the costs of AI products, and whether they will come down, investing in India's startup ecosystem and more. American technology firm Micron was the first major company to sign up for the Indian government's $1 billion Indian Semiconductor Mission when it announced a chip assembly plant in Gujarat last year at an overall investment of $2.75 billion. The firm, which builds memory products and is currently riding a generative artificial intelligence (GenAI)-led boom, having seen its market cap rise about 117% in the past year to $145.92 billion. Its chief business officer, Sumit Sadana, told ET in an interview that the company hopes to start the India facility by 2025 which will complement some part of its global sales given its AI led products are sold out till 2025. He also spoke about whether the exorbitant cost of AI products will come down, productivity gains, investing in India's startup ecosystem and more. Edited excerpts: On Micron's upcoming India facility We have been working with various organisations in India to make this project a reality and we expect it to be operational in 2025. We expect to start shipping volume from there as the largest semiconductor back-end manufacturing facility, assembly, packaging and test in India. So, it's going to really help revitalise and kick-start India's semiconductor ecosystem as well. We are very excited about the broader implications of that for the Indian economy as well. Our goal is to bring the supply in line with the demand growth and, of course, in the medium term, demand growth is very strong led by AI. On AI-led demand growth We are ramping up our output to meet the demand for our most important products. We reported our fiscal third quarter results in the last few days - our AI-related data centre revenue grew 50% sequentially and our data centre mix of the business reached a new record. So, we are definitely seeing a lot of strong growth and our high-bandwidth memory product, which is the core of the AI portfolio, is sold out through 2024 and calendar 2025. So, exciting times (ahead) and as the India facility comes on line, certainly we look to complement our sales with the output from that facility. Also read | Micron Tech beats revenue estimates on AI chip demand; shares fall after run-up On whether GenAI is creating a divide for enterprises due to prohibitive pricing I think instead of looking at the absolute price of these semiconductor products, it is important to see what these products are enabling. So, for a 20%, 30% or 40% increase in price, a product can support 10 times more users, So, in absolute terms, the price may have gone up but the price on a per user basis has gone down massively. AI products are arguably expensive. But when you measure them from one generation of product to the next, they are creating massive increases in capability. And that will bring the price of each query down. On the transformational impact of AI There may be some bumps along the road, but over time we do expect AI to become extremely meaningful. It's going to transform all of our lives. And it is something very foundational just like discovering fire for the first time or creating the wheel for the first time. These things marked very important foundational shifts in how humanity leveraged these inventions, and the internet and connected computers around the internet also marked a similar generational shift. AI is bigger than the internet, bigger than smartphones and it is going to really change a lot of things about how we all live and work and entertain ourselves. On where startups can compete in AI The data centre infrastructure needed to train these models is quite expensive and not easy for startups to afford. Startups that have good value proposition for new capabilities can certainly partner with large companies and can create a win-win solution because the large companies do put up these massive data centres and put that infrastructure in there. They also want unique interesting ideas through which they can monetise all of their investments. Startups that are focused on enabling that can do really well. How many large language models or foundational models do you need? You don't need a lot of them. There are already quite a few of them. What is needed now is products and capabilities and services that can help create user experiences and agents and capabilities that can actually drive productivity in the workforce, drive productivity for large businesses, drive unique new features and functionality for consumers. The next trillion-dollar company, I'm convinced (if it has not been created yet), will be a startup and there is going to be a very vibrant ecosystem of startups that will come up. Also read | Micron set to get $6.1 billion in chip grants from US On whether Micron will invest in Indian startups We have a $300 million fund that we use to make those investments. So, companies in India that come up with innovative ideas which can be scaled worldwide, particularly if they have applications that relate to semiconductors or lateral semiconductors, as well as those in the sustainability space (will be on our radar). In terms of the Indian startup scene... there's an explosion of startups, and I'm super excited to see it having grown up in India myself. On whether HBMs will be assembled in India The HBM product is a very complex product. It is the most complex product made in the history of the memory industry. Right now, our plan is to assemble them in Taiwan and ultimately in other places as well. It is something that requires a little bit of a more mature ecosystem to do that right so it will take some time before something like that can be done in India. But we are a massive facility in India, with 500,000 sq ft of space. We are developing in two phases and will also look at further expansion in time.

AI is as foundational as discovery of fire, says Micron global CBO - ET Telecom

Devices 5 min read AI is as foundational as discovery of fire, says Micron global CBO Its chief business officer, Sumit Sadana, told ET in an interview that the company hopes to start the India facility by 2025 which will complement some part of its global sales given its AI led products are sold out till 2025. He also spoke about whether the exorbitant cost of AI products will come down, productivity gains, investing in India's startup ecosystem and more. American technology firm Micron was the first major company to sign up for the Indian government's $1 billion Indian Semiconductor Mission when it announced a chip assembly plant in Gujarat last year at an overall investment of $2.75 billion. The firm, which builds memory products and is currently riding a generative artificial intelligence (GenAI)-led boom, having seen its market cap rise about 117% in the past year to $145.92 billion. Its chief business officer, Sumit Sadana, told ET in an interview that the company hopes to start the India facility by 2025 which will complement some part of its global sales given its AI led products are sold out till 2025. He also spoke about whether the exorbitant cost of AI products will come down, productivity gains, investing in India's startup ecosystem and more. Edited excerpts: