Vijayawada: After finding itself in the midst of a political storm, Ursa Clusters, a company promoted by a group of NRIs, announced that it has onboarded two former top executives of NVIDIA. Ursa has proposed to invest Rs 5,728 crore in Visakhapatnam to develop AI-powered data centres with a promise of creating 2,500 jobs.Ursa, the infrastructure arm of Ursa Cloud incorporated in the US, announced the addition of Alex Tsado and Keith Dines, both of whom worked with NVIDIA in the past. While Alex will lead the technology programme, Keith will be the chief architect in building data centre infrastructure. Ursa has already announced the onboarding of Eric Warner, who earlier worked in key leadership roles at Oracle and Sun Microsystems, as chief revenue officer. Warner will lead Ursa’s commercial partnerships with hyperscale cloud providers and AI-first enterprises, according to a statement issued by the company.Alex previously led Cloud AI and high-performance computing go-to-market strategy at NVIDIA. He also led the technology programme for NVIDIA in building data centres in the US and China, spearheading GPU launches for the company. On the other hand, Keith has more than 30 years of data centre experience, especially in areas of data centre architecture and construction management. He built NVIDIA’s private cloud and R&D test labs.Satish Abburi, the co-founder of Ursa Clusters, said with Alex and Keith coming on board, they are confident of executing the project well within the timelines. “The combined expertise of Alex and Keith will bring in a unique blend of business strategy and technical execution. Their leadership will be instrumental in ensuring Ursa Clusters delivers facilities that meet NVIDIA DGX certification standards for enterprise and research-grade AI performance,” he said.Satish further added that India’s data centre market is projected to reach $4.5 billion by 2030, which is growing at a pace three times the global average. “Ursa Clusters aims to lead this growth by offering integrated infrastructure solutions across data centres, GPU cloud platforms, and managed AI services. With the leadership expansion and strategic partnerships with build partners, we are poised to take the lead in India’s AI-powered future,” he said.Andhra Pradesh govt allotted 3.5 acres in IT Park and 56.36 acres at Kapuluppada in Visakhapatnam to Ursa to set up its office space and data centre in April. However, the proposal sparked a controversy, with former Vijayawada MP Kesineni Srinivas levelling allegations against the promoters of the company. However, the state govt clarified that the land allotment was subject to the fulfilment of specific performance targets.
