India Boosts AI Infrastructure: 14,000 Additional GPUs to be Procured Under IndiaAI Mission

IndiaAI Adds 14,000 GPUs, Count Rises to 32,000, Confirms IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw | AIM

The procurement aims to strengthen India's AI compute capacity, particularly for training large and small language models (LLMs and SLMs), which power most generative AI systems. India is set to procure an additional 14,000 GPUs as part of the IndiaAI Mission, Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw announced on Thursday, reported CNBC-TV18. This brings the total GPU count under the mission to over 32,000, following an earlier acquisition of nearly 18,700 units. "This is a big change, and AI is here for good," Vaishnaw said while stressing the government's push to "democratise" access to AI and drive technological transformation across sectors. The procurement aims to strengthen India's AI compute capacity, particularly for training large and small language models (LLMs and SLMs), which power most generative AI systems. The expansion is a big step towards building India's own AI infrastructure. Seven companies cleared the technical round of the IndiaAI Mission's second GPU tender, and their commercial bids were recently opened. These include Netmagic (NTT Global), Cyfuture India, Sify Digital Services, Vensysco Technologies, Locuz Enterprise Solutions, Yotta Data Services, and Ishan Infotech. Originally, the IndiaAI Mission featured over 18,000 GPUs through public-private partnerships with companies including Jio Platforms, NxtGen Data Centre, Locuz Enterprise, E2E Networks, CtrlS DataCenters, CMS Computers, Orient Technologies, Tata Communications, Vensysco, and Yotta Data Services. According to IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, eligible users will get access to this computing power at up to 40% lower cost. The total budget for the initiative is ₹10,372 crore. About 14,000 units have already been made available in the first round, according to the CNBC report. Vaishnaw added that the mission will also focus on developing foundational AI models that will be made open-source. "The goal is to ensure AI tools and infrastructure are not concentrated in the hands of a few but are accessible to all innovators and developers," he said. The announcement signals the government's intent to provide wide access to AI resources and reduce reliance on private cloud monopolies, aligning with broader digital public infrastructure goals.

IndiaAI Mission GPU tender round 2: All seven shortlisted bidders clear technical round

All the seven shortlisted companies have qualified in the technical round of IndiaAI Mission's second round of graphics processing units (GPU) tender and their commercial bids were opened on Thursday afternoon, ET has learnt. The L1 (lowest) price for the various GPU models offered by the bidders and the names of the L1 bidders for various GPU variants will be disclosed next week, people aware of the process said. The selected bidders include Netmagic (now NTT Global Data Centres and Cloud Infrastructure division), Cyfuture India, Sify Digital Services, Vensysco Technologies, Locuz Enterprise Solutions, Yotta Data Services, and Ishan Infotech. ET had reported on May 13 that the Centre has received bids proposing to offer a total of 18,000 GPUs in the second round of the IndiaAI GPU tender and that it expects 15,000 GPUs to finally be offered. Cyfuture has proposed to offer 1,184 GPUs, including Nvidia's H100, L40S and A100 GPUs, AMD's MI300 and MI325 GPUs, and Intel's Gaudi 2 and Gaudi 3 GPUs. It has placed purchase orders for the same, people cited above said. Vensysco has proposed to offer 2,300 GPUs: 2,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs, 100 AWS Trainium 1 GPUs, and 200 AWS Inferentia 2 GPUs. Yotta has proposed to offer Nvidia Blackwell B200s. GPU models that NTT-Netmagic, Sify, Locuz and Ishan propose to offer are not known. While Vensysco and Locuz are Amazon Web Services partners, Ishan is an Oracle partner and NTT-Netmagic is a leading Google Cloud partner in India. Under the first round of the GPU tender concluded in February, IndiaAI Mission is offering 14,517 GPUs on subsidised rates to the country's startups, academics and research organisations. ET had reported on April 26 that the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) had assigned artificial intelligence (AI) projects, or workloads, to three companies selected to supply GPUs under the IndiaAI Mission. The government, however, has not named the beneficiaries of the programme. India gave the cabinet approval for the Rs 10,000-crore India AI Mission in March last year, with a target of creating an artificial intelligence (AI) compute infrastructure by procuring over 10,000 GPUs. As part of the mission, the government is also incentivising the development of local language models built by academia and industry with investment capital and other support. The move is aimed at building up India's AI prowess. ET reported on May 16 that the IndiaAI Mission has received 506 foundation AI model proposals across three phases. As part of the first phase of approvals, Sarvam.ai was selected to initiate the development of an indigenous foundational model. Sarvam will get access to 4,096 Nvidia H100 GPUs for six months from the IndiaAI Mission's common compute cluster to train its model.

Govt To Procure Additional 14,000 GPUs: IT Minister

Vaishnaw also reiterated that India's first semiconductor chip, ranging between 28 to 90 nm, will be rolled out of a local fab later this year IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw has reportedly said that the government is all set to procure an additional 14,000 graphics processing units (GPUs) under the IndiaAI mission. "In the first round, our target was to make 10,000 GPUs available to everybody... so against the target of 10,000 GPUs, in the first round itself, we secured 18,000 GPUs and now we are about to get another 14,000 GPUs. So, that's a substantial number," said Vaishnaw as per The Hindu businessline. This will be in addition to the 18,000 GPUs procured by the Centre in the past few months. In January this year, the government empanelled bidders such as CMS Computers, Jio Platforms, Tata Communications, E2E Networks and Yotta Data Services, among others to offer GPUs for the common compute facility. Previously, Vaishnaw has said that this computing facility will be the "most affordable" globally and will be lower than $1 per hour. It is pertinent to note that 40% of the cost of the AI compute price will be borne by the government. Speaking at the CII Business Summit 2025, Vaishnaw reportedly said, "This is a big change, and AI is here for good". Stressing the importance of an indigenous large language model (LLM), the minister also said the country will soon have AI models that are designed and trained on Indian data including culture, languages, nuances and social norms. Speaking about the project to build a homegrown LLM, Vaishnaw said that the Centre is in the advanced stages of approving three to four applications for the AI model being developed by SarvamAI. "So, we have taken up development of models, one of the first ones is being developed by Sarvam - there are 3-4 applications which are in the advanced stage of approvals. We are also taking up common datasets as part of this entire process so that you can develop your own applications, which are useful for you, whether it is the agriculture sector, healthcare, or industrial, whichever way. We can develop the models that are suitable for our own needs," Vaishnaw reportedly said. It is pertinent to note that SarvamAI was selected among the first batch of applicants to build the indigenous AI model under the INR 10,371.92 Cr IndiaAI mission. He also reportedly noted that the government's intent is to "democratise" access to AI and prepare the country for rapid technological transformation. Meanwhile, as per NDTV, Vaishnaw also reiterated that India's first semiconductor chip, ranging between 28 to 90 nanometres (nm), will be rolled out of a local fab later this year. "Today, six fabrication units are under construction. The rollout of the first Made in India chip is expected this year. We initiated this journey in 2022, and the progress has been steady," Vaishnaw reportedly added. On the rationale for targeting the 28 to 90 nm space, the minister said that the government adopted a "focussed approach" by targeting a specific market segment that constitutes 60% of global semiconductor demand. Chips within this range are used in automotive systems, telecommunications, and power equipment.

IndiaAI Mission: All 7 Shortlisted Companies Clear Technical Round For GPU Tender

Under the second round of bidding, the Centre is aiming to give 15,000 GPUs Days after getting shortlisted for the second round of GPU tender under the IndiaAI Mission, all the seven companies have now cleared the technical round. An ET report, citing sources, said that all the shortlisted companies have cleared the technical presentation round and their commercial bids were opened yesterday. The lowest price for GPU models offered by bidders and the name of the lowest bidder for various GPU variants will likely be disclosed next week. As per the sources, Cyfuture has placed a purchase order for 1,184 GPUs (including NVIDIA's H100, L40S and A100 GPUs, AMD's MI300 and MI325 GPUs and Intel's Gaudi 2 and Gaudi 3 GPUs). Vensysco has proposed to offer 2,300 GPUs (including 2,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs, 100 AWS Trainium 1 GPUs, and 200 AWS Inferentia 2 GPUs) Yotta has proposed to offer NVIDIA Blackwell B200s. Whereas, GPU proposals from other rest of the bidders are yet to come. This comes on the back of IndiaAI CEO Abhishek Singh disclosing that out of 18,000 GPU bids received, only 15,000 GPUs will be offered after checking technical qualifications and commercial bid-opening. IndiaAI Mission: The Providers And Recipients In 2024, the government launched IndiaAI Mission with an initial outlay of INR 10,372 Cr over the next five years. With this mission, the Centre aims to build an AI ecosystem, offering supercomputing capabilities comprising over 10,000 GPUs to various stakeholders including startups, academic institutions, government agencies and research institutes. In the first phase, the government invited proposals from Indian academic institutions, R&D organisations, companies, and startups engaged in areas such as machine unlearning, synthetic data generation, AI bias mitigation and more. These applicants (receivers) submitted proposals regarding their needs for GPUs to execute their AI projects. In the first bidding round, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology invited bids from cloud services providers and data centre operators (providers) to supply and manage AI computing infrastructure including GPUs. The Centre selected ten tech giants including Jio Platforms, Tata Communications, CMS Computers India Pvt Ltd, Ctrls Datacenters Ltd, E2E Networks Limited, Locuz Enterprise Solutions Ltd, Orient Technologies Ltd, NxtGen Datacenter and Cloud Technologies Private Ltd, Vensysco Technologies Limited and Yotta Data Services Limited. The government also recently picked Bengaluru-based Sarvam AI to build India's first homegrown sovereign large language model (LLM) under this mission. Last month, the Centre also assigned AI projects to Hiranandani Group's Yotta Data Services, E2E Networks and NxtGen Cloud Technologies offering GPUs under the IndiaAI Mission. Notably, the bidders are expected to either provide their own data centres or partner with global cloud providers to deliver GPUs under IndiaAI Mission. Similarly, the seven selected bidders in the second round are either partners with global giants or give access to their own data centres. It is pertinent to note that these providers do not deliver physical GPUs. For instance, Vensysco and Locuz are partners with Amazon Web Services (AWS). Ishan Infotech is partnering with Oracle and Netmagic is collaborating with Google Cloud to offer GPUs. Besides, bidders like Cyfuture have already placed a purchase order for the GPUs it is committing to offer.