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This week, the Ministry of Communication and Digital Affairs (Komdigi), Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison (Indosat or IOH), NVIDIA, and Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM) launched the UGM Indosat NVIDIA AI Technology Center (NVAITC) in Yogyakarta, marking the country’s first university-based AI technology center. Established under Indonesia’s AI Center of Excellence initiative, the facility unites government, industry, and academia to develop artificial intelligence that addresses Indonesia’s most urgent national priorities. Minister of Communication and Digital Affairs Meutya Hafid stated, “The Indonesia AI Center of Excellence reflects our long-term vision to position Indonesia as a nation that not only adopts AI but also develops and contributes AI innovations to the world,” adding that the initiative lays the foundations of AI sovereignty while ensuring AI drives economic growth, national competitiveness, and solutions to pressing challenges.

UGM leadership highlighted the educational and developmental impact of the partnership. Prof. dr. Ova Emilia, Ph.D., said, “UGM is committed to supporting Indonesia’s AI ambitions through education, research, and innovation that deliver real societal impact,” emphasizing that the center supports national priorities in higher education, research downstreaming, and talent development by accelerating AI adoption and preparing future-ready Indonesian graduates. Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison president director and CEO Vikram Sinha reinforced this mission, stating, “At Indosat, we believe no Indonesian should be left behind in the AI era,” and explaining that the center brings global AI technologies and expertise to Indonesia while expanding access for researchers, students, startups, and innovators nationwide. He added that by strengthening AI readiness and empowering local talent, they aim to help position Indonesia as a developer and contributor of AI innovations rather than merely a consumer.

The center runs on NVIDIA’s full-stack AI platform and GPU Merdeka, Indosat’s sovereign GPU-as-a-service platform. This infrastructure provides UGM researchers and students with enterprise-grade accelerated computing, AI software, open-source tools, pretrained models, development frameworks, and technical mentorship, while connecting Indonesian experts to a worldwide ecosystem. NVIDIA vice president of solutions architecture and engineering Marc Hamilton noted, “Indonesia is home to an extraordinary community of researchers, developers and innovators with the potential to shape the future of AI,” and confirmed that NVIDIA will equip Indonesian talent with its Nemotron open models and expertise to turn local potential into innovation with both domestic and global impact.

Historically, researchers in Indonesia, the world’s fourth-most populous country, have lacked the compute power, models, and infrastructure required to move from insight to impact. To bridge this gap, NVAITC has launched three initial projects focused on healthcare, agriculture, and natural disaster response. In healthcare, Indonesia records over one million new tuberculosis cases every year. Because detection in rural and underserved areas has relied on unavailable equipment and expertise, UGM’s Faculty of Medicine Public Health and Nursing team, led by dr. Dian Kesumapramudya Nurputra, M.Sc, Ph.D, SpA, is developing eNose-TB, an AI-powered electronic screening technology that analyzes breath samples. The goal is to create affordable, fast, and accessible screening for remote clinics and villages without requiring specialists or expensive labs. Dr. Dian shared, “As researchers, we have always believed that technology developed in Indonesia can solve Indonesian challenges,” noting that access to world-class AI infrastructure will accelerate their research and bring them closer to developing affordable healthcare technologies that improve lives across Indonesia.

In agriculture, which employs nearly thirty percent of Indonesia’s workforce, the SmartAgri initiative uses multimodal AI combined with satellite imagery, sensor data, and local agricultural knowledge alongside edge computing to deliver precision farming tailored to Indonesian terrain, crops, and smallholders. These AI-powered recommendations guide farmers on exactly when and how to irrigate, delivering compounding impacts over time. Finally, because Indonesia sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire and faces more natural disaster risk than almost anywhere else, the Tech4Disaster project is building a geospatial AI platform using NVIDIA accelerated computing to rapidly process satellite and sensor data. This system provides communities and emergency responders with earlier warnings, better situational awareness, and faster coordination tools during crises. Readers are invited to learn more about the UGM Indosat NVIDIA AI Technology Center to explore these ongoing developments.