SoftBank, Nvidia, Microsoft and others said Monday that they have formed an alliance aimed at effectively using mobile base stations with the help of artificial intelligence. The members of the AI-Ran Alliance aim to work together in preventing communications congestion and promoting the use of smartphone apps using generative AI. The initiative was unveiled at the Mobile World Congress, an international trade fair for the telecommunications industry, in Spain. The group will apply AI technology so that data processing can be performed at mobile base stations rather than in the cloud, to help save power and eliminate communication delays. The alliance "has been formed with the vision to spearhead the advancement of society through AI innovations, particularly from the telecom industry," SoftBank President and CEO Junichi Miyakawa said in a statement.

On Wednesday, Nvidia announced a collaboration with Microsoft to build a "massive" cloud computer focused on AI. It will reportedly use tens of thousands of high-end Nvidia GPUs for applications like deep learning and large language models. The companies aim to make it one of the most powerful AI supercomputers in the world. In turn, the new supercomputer will feature thousands of units of what is arguably the most powerful GPU in the world, the Hopper H100, which Nvidia launched in October. Nvidia will also provide its second most powerful GPU, the A100, and utilize its Quantum-2 InfiniBand networking platform, which can transfer data at 400 gigabits per second between servers, linking them together into a powerful cluster.