Indonesia launches AI Center of Excellence with NVIDIA and Cisco to build sovereign capabilities

Indonesia has launched an AI Center of Excellence in partnership with NVIDIA, Cisco, and telecommunications leader Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison to advance the nation’s sovereign AI capabilities. The initiative, led by the Ministry of Communications and Digital Affairs, aims to foster local AI research, develop indigenous talent, and drive innovation through collaboration with startups as part of Indonesia’s “Golden 2045 Vision” for digital transformation.

What you should know: The AI Center of Excellence will feature comprehensive infrastructure and training programs designed to make Indonesia an AI creator rather than just a consumer.

• A new NVIDIA AI Technology Center will provide research support, NVIDIA Inception program benefits for eligible startups, and NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute training and certification to upskill local talent.
• The center includes an AI factory powered by full-stack NVIDIA AI infrastructure, featuring NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs, NVIDIA Cloud Partner reference architectures, and NVIDIA AI Enterprise software.
• Cisco will provide the Sovereign Security Operations Center Cloud Platform, combining AI-based threat detection, localized data control, and managed security services.

Who’s involved: Three major technology leaders are spearheading this initiative alongside the Indonesian government.

• Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison President Director and CEO Vikram Sinha emphasized that “we’re accelerating Indonesia’s path to economic growth by ensuring Indonesians are not just users of AI, but creators and innovators.”
• Cisco Chair and CEO Chuck Robbins noted that “the AI era demands fundamental architectural shifts and a workforce with digital skills to thrive.”
• NVIDIA Senior Vice President of Telecom Ronnie Vasishta highlighted that “democratizing AI is more important than ever” and that Indonesia’s AI ecosystem “can serve as a model for nations looking to harness AI for innovation and economic growth.”

Real-world applications: The initiative is already demonstrating practical impact across multiple sectors through locally developed AI solutions.

• Twenty-eight independent software vendors and startups are using IOH’s NVIDIA-powered AI infrastructure to develop technologies for higher education, food security, bureaucratic reform, smart cities, mobility, and healthcare.
• The Indonesia government and Hippocratic AI, a healthcare technology company, are collaborating on an AI agent system using Indosat’s Sahabat-AI collection of Bahasa Indonesian large language models to provide preventative healthcare outreach, such as helping women over 50 schedule mammograms.
• Sahabat-AI enables Indosat’s AI chatbot to answer citizen queries in Indonesian about government services, including national ID card updates, tax rates, and payment procedures.

The big picture: This partnership builds on Indonesia’s sovereign AI initiatives announced with NVIDIA last year and represents a strategic approach to AI development that prioritizes local language, culture, and needs.

• With Indosat’s coverage across the archipelago, the company can reach hundreds of millions of Bahasa Indonesian speakers with its LLM-powered applications.
• A government-led forum is developing trustworthy AI frameworks tailored to Indonesian values for safe, responsible AI development and related policies.
• Looking forward, Indosat and NVIDIA plan to deploy AI-RAN technologies that can reach even broader audiences using AI over wireless networks.