Asus to sell Nvidia AI servers you can install in your office

Hong Kong – Taiwan’s Asustek Computer plans to introduce one of the first services that lets companies tap the potential of generative artificial intelligence (AI) while keeping control over their data.

The novelty of the Taipei-based firm’s offering, called AFS Appliance, is that all of the hardware will be installed in the client’s own facilities – to maintain security and control. The AI computational platform, built on Nvidia’s chip technology, will be operated and updated with new data by Asustek, usually referred to as Asus.

A major concern around services like OpenAI is that they are operated through online data centres that can expose sensitive information. Samsung Electronics

banned employees from using OpenAI’s ChatGPT

after it found that workers had uploaded sensitive code to the platform.

Asus will preload the AFS hardware with its own large language model, called Formosa, which it says is equivalent to ChatGPT 3.5 and trained in traditional Chinese. The company aims to price the service at around US$6,000 (S$8,000) per month, Asus Cloud and Taiwan Web Service president Peter Wu said in an interview on Monday.

The highest-spec offering, which adds an Nvidia DGX AI supercomputer platform, will cost around US$10,000 a month, he said. Partnering with a local telecom company, Mr Wu aims to have 30 to 50 enterprise customers in Taiwan and expand internationally by the end of 2023.

Nvidia is partnering Asus “to accelerate the enterprise adoption of this technology”. Before ChatGPT, enterprises were not aware that they needed “so much computing power”, he said.

Most businesses will deploy generative AI on their own premises due to sensitivity about access to their proprietary data, according to Mr Wu.

“They need a smart brain to be under their own control and management as it will touch on the most sensitive data,” he said.

Recently returning from a trip to Singapore, Asus’ cloud chief said he sees a lot of interest from banks and hospitals. In the clinical context, generative AI would help doctors document treatments and patient visits quicker, while also helping communicate diagnoses in a more relatable language to patients.

One potential customer, a large legal firm, told Mr Wu its priority is to have regularly refreshed data, which is part of the company’s service.

Nvidia’s stock has skyrocketed due to demand for its AI-training chips,

although firms like Asus will seek to carve out a share of the market for themselves by offering holistic AI systems.

There is no supply shortage of Nvidia’s A100 chips, which run AFS Appliance, Mr Wu said, and the existing partnership between the companies is helping to ensure that Asus will have all the firepower it needs to roll out its new offering. BLOOMBERG