One of South Africa’s first AI factories has hit the ground running, attracting interest from companies keen to leverage enterprise-level AI infrastructure and services.

Altron’s new AI factory – a complete AI ecosystem for South African enterprises – is unlocking access for companies, large and small, to build cutting-edge AI solutions and innovate at a competitive price on an as-a-service basis, says Altron Group CTO Dr Bongani Andy Mabaso.

In October, Altron formally launched what it says is South Africa’s first operational AI factory, with the platform at the time going live with five launch customers – including Dataviue, Lelapa AI and MathU – a number that has since grown substantially.

The AI factory was conceptualised in early 2024, with development starting late last year. Following extensive testing to ensure that the initiative meets wide-ranging needs and use cases for a variety of enterprises – from large corporates to small and medium- sized enterprises – Altron operationalised the ecosystem at the end of September with its anchor early-adopter clients, Mabaso says.

The AI factory is powered by technology giant Nvidia AI infrastructure, including Nvidia accelerated computing and Nvidia AI Enterprise software, and is hosted in one of Johannesburg-based Teraco’s Nvidia AI-ready data centres.

The AI factory was also developed in partnership with Asus, serving as the dedicated hardware partner and delivering the high-performance computing infrastructure, and HPE, which is providing the marketplace software enabling the platform’s AI services.

Nvidia defines an AI factory as a specialised computing infrastructure optimised for AI workloads, managing the entire AI lifecycle – from data ingestion to training, fine-tuning and high-volume AI inference.

Altron’s AI factory platform, combining enterprise-grade Nvidia-accelerated computing infrastructure and AI-as-a-Service with local control and competitive pricing, presents an opportunity for South African businesses facing increasing pressure to innovate while protecting their digital assets and managing their technology investments, Mabaso says.

“We are not choosing between global technology excellence and local context; we are combining both. Working with our technology launch partners, we have created an ecosystem where South African businesses can build cutting-edge AI solutions and enterprises can consume world-class AI services at competitive pricing.”

The platform, boasting more than 800 curated AI models, delivers comprehensive AI infrastructure, tools, training and support, with a team of AI specialists on hand to help clients navigate the platform as a launchpad to speed up AI development and the delivery of services to the market.

Altron’s team provides specialised AI consulting and managed services and, with over 60 global AI certifications across its team, it partners with clients to develop use-case-specific AI models with depth and data in core verticals.

“Instead of months of buildout, offshore dependencies or expertise gaps, our customers get the platform, the expertise and the support to make AI actually work for their business. The foundation is ready. That is transformative,” says Altron Digital Business data and AI executive Mike Wright.

A major advantage is data sovereignty, Mabaso tells Engineering News & Mining Weekly.

Altron’s AI factory ensures sensitive information remains within South African jurisdiction, protected by local laws, which addresses enterprises’ critical data sovereignty concerns.

Teraco channel and public sector head Di Buijs adds that this empowers industries such as banking, financial services and the public sector to unlock the full potential of AI while ensuring secure, local data compliance.

This also enables companies to steer the direction of AI research and development to meet their specific needs.

“Our corporates have their own challenges that are unique to their environment. Many of our customers want to leverage AI to solve these specific challenges,” Mabaso adds, noting that, with local expertise, knowledge and data sets, local platforms that allow them to do that become very powerful.

Altron CEO Werner Kapp points out: “The African continent, and South Africa, for as long as I have been in technology, has been a consumer of technology. Our data leaves our shores. We often consume this technology at quite high costs, and it is mainly dollar- denominated costs.”

One ambition of the initiative was to break down these cost barriers to AI innovation, while ensuring data sovereignty and delivering local expertise to global standards.

“This is local, at local cost point, and the data does not leave the country.”

This also ensures that clients’ data remains protected under South African laws, eliminating the compliance concerns that can arise with offshore solutions, explains Dataviue MD Pieta Heyns.

“We are accessing the same AI infrastructure that global giants use, and AI models that align with our market reality. This enables us to iterate faster and scale our personalised education platform with confidence,” says MathU founder WA Burger.

Further, Lelapa AI CRO Mbali Ndandani points out that access to existing AI models and enterprise-grade infrastructure to develop solutions for underrepresented African languages provides enterprises with the opportunity to consume AI services without building their own infrastructure.

Strong Demand

Mabaso says that the demand has been tremendous, driven by Altron’s focused ambitions and its emphasis on ensuring the platform is “as simple as possible”.

“We still have a long way to go to make it the best experience in Africa, but we are going to do that,” Mabaso says, commenting that the company is only at an early stage of its long-term vision for the platform.

“The future will be building out the ecosystem, making it as easy as possible for [both] small firms and large corporates to run, deploy and fine-tune their own AI models, and making AI work for their own use cases.”

Altron is continuing to develop the platform to introduce more innovation.

“We believe that AI, or at least AI infrastructure and AI platforms, will become stable in the enterprise IT stack of the future in the next two to five years.

“We are just getting started,” he says, noting that the AI factory is one segment of Altron’s overall Horizon 3 strategy.

“We have always said to the market that we will invest in transformative growth, and that is exactly what we are doing.”

Altron is not alone in establishing AI factories in South Africa, or across Africa, to provide access to local AI infrastructure.

In March, Cassava Technologies announced plans to build five AI factories – powerful and super-secure data centre facilities powered by Nvidia AI computing technology – across Africa.

The company plans to deploy Nvidia-accelerated computing and AI software using Nvidia Cloud Partner reference architectures at its data centres, initially in South Africa and subsequently at data centre facilities in Egypt, Kenya, Morocco and Nigeria.

With access to cutting-edge AI computing capacity, African businesses and governments can develop local solutions to local challenges, enabling Africans to build, train, scale and deploy AI in a secure environment compliant with global and local regulations.

“Building digital infrastructure for the AI economy is a priority if Africa is to take full advantage of the fourth industrial revolution,” said Cassava founder and chairperson Strive Masiyiwa.

In 2024, Dell launched the Dell AI Factory with Nvidia designed to help businesses harness the power of AI to address their most complex challenges.

From agriculture and healthcare to retail and financial services, global businesses are unlocking the full potential of their data and AI capabilities through the Dell AI Factory with Nvidia, the company said.