India's Micromax Teams Up With Taiwan's Phison To Manufacture AI Storage Chips Locally, Lower Graphics Unit Costs

Micromax, an Indian electronics company, has partnered with Taiwan's Phison, a leader in NAND controller and storage technologies, to form a joint venture named MiPhi. 

This initiative aims to design and locally manufacture AI-enabled storage chip modules, marking a significant milestone in India's tech landscape.

Rahul Sharma, Co-Founder of Micromax, shared that production has already commenced at the company’s Noida facility. "Phison is a leader in NAND controller and NAND storage technologies. We have partnered with them to set up a joint venture in India in which Micromax will have 55 per cent stake and 45 per cent will be with Phison," Sharma said.

The new venture will prioritise designing storage chipsets for servers, a crucial component for national security and strategic applications.

"With this venture, we aim to bring down the cost of GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) by one-tenth... the lowest per token cost in the world. This will help us in disrupting the AI landscape not only in India but also in specific agreed-upon regions," Sharma added.

MiPhi plans to complete trials with leading Indian organisations by the end of this month and start commercial shipments in the first quarter of 2025. Sharma highlighted the importance of this initiative in reducing India’s reliance on foreign technologies.

"There are only a few companies that are providing storage solutions. It is very important for countries, especially India which has no indigenous storage solutions company. Our joint venture will help reduce dependence on foreign technologies as we will have our own design and manufacturing," he said.

The company is committed to nurturing local talent by hiring and training freshers in advanced storage technology. "Our concept is designed first for India and then for the world. Our aspiration is to get the first design ready in 2 years. We are building up a team and expect to have 1,000 engineers in the next 3 years. Phison will train all of them," Sharma stated.

MiPhi’s focus will include AI-adaptive storage solutions. The venture will source wafers from existing players to create storage modules and plans to establish local sales teams across India. 

These teams will target embedded solutions for a wide array of industries, including automobiles, IoT, mobile devices, data centers, IT hubs, consumer electronics, and removable storage systems.

This partnership signals a significant leap forward in India’s efforts to bolster indigenous technological capabilities and establish itself as a global hub for advanced AI-enabled storage solutions.

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