The financial services industry is amidst unprecedented disruption and innovation.

The quest is on to reduce AI’s overdependence on power-hungry and expensive GPUs, making them more affordable, accessible, and sustainable.

To the novice, it might seem as if artificial intelligence (AI) is a magical genie that gives you everything you ask for with the snap of a finger, but techies know that a lot of muscle power (read graphics processing units, or GPUs) goes into making it all work.

The financial services industry is amidst unprecedented disruption and innovation. Global markets are evolving rapidly amid regulatory shifts, technology breakthroughs, and an expanding class of retail investors embracing digital-first platforms. At the heart of this transformation stands India, not only as a powerhouse of tech talent but also as a strategic leader redefining how financial technology will evolve globally.

Reflecting on the pace of transformation, Tom Carey, Corporate Vice President, President of Global Technology and Operations, Broadridge remarked, “Like the legendary Ferrari that stunned the world by speeding onto the Formula 1 grid with breakthrough performance, our industry cannot afford anything less than rapid, relentless innovation.”

Why Smaller AI Models Are More Efficient

Smaller AI models are not just cheaper; they are more efficient. According to VentureBeat, these models deliver impressive performance with significantly lower computational needs. Unlike large models, they do not require expensive GPUs or cloud computing power.

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can integrate AI into their workflows without massive investments. The reduced resource demand also lowers energy consumption. This makes AI adoption feasible for companies with limited budgets.

Startup Ecosystem Advances AI Energy Efficiency, Sustainability Projects

Emerald AI, a NVIDIA NVentures portfolio company, is collaborating with NVIDIA on a recently unveiled NVIDIA Omniverse Blueprint for building high-performance, grid-friendly and energy-efficient AI infrastructure.

This new reference design enables the transformation of data centers into fully integrated AI factories — optimized so that every watt of energy contributes to intelligence generation.

“As a collaborator on NVIDIA’s reference design for giga-scale AI factories, we’re helping prove that AI compute can be power-flexible,” said Varun Sivaram, founder and CEO of Emerald AI. “It’s a paradigm shift with a massive prize: unlocking 100 gigawatts of untapped power grid capacity and resolving AI’s energy bottleneck while promoting affordable, reliable and clean power grids.”

Emerald AI is a member of the NVIDIA Inception program for startups, within the Sustainable Futures initiative. These companies are pioneering developments in fields such as green computing, sustainable infrastructure, wildlife conservation and more.

By - Aaradhay Sharma