India Selects Three More Startups to Develop Indigenous AI Foundation Models

IndiaAI Mission Expands Foundation Model Development

The IndiaAI Mission has taken a significant step forward in its goal to develop indigenous artificial intelligence capabilities by selecting three additional startups to create foundation models. Soket AI, Gnani.ai, and Gan.AI will join the previously announced Sarvam AI in this ambitious endeavor 1

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New Startups and Their Objectives

Each of the newly selected startups has been tasked with developing specialized foundation models:

1. Soket AI: Founded by Abhishek Upperwal, will create India's first open-source 120 billion parameter foundation model. This model will be optimized for India's linguistic diversity and target sectors such as defense, healthcare, and education 1

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Source: Inc42

2. Gnani.ai: Co-founded by Ganesh Gopalan and Ananth Nagaraj, will build a 14 billion parameter Voice AI foundation model. This model aims to deliver multilingual, real-time speech processing with advanced reasoning capabilities 1

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3. Gan.AI: Will focus on developing a 70 billion parameter multilingual foundation model, targeting superhuman text-to-speech (TTS) capabilities 2

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Expanded Compute Resources

To support these ambitious projects, the IndiaAI Mission has significantly increased its GPU compute capacity:

• The total available GPU compute capacity has been expanded to 34,000 GPUs 1

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• This includes an additional 15,000 GPUs on top of the existing 18,000 1

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• The GPU mix includes high-performance models from NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel 1

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Government Support and Vision

Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw has set high expectations for the selected teams:

• The startups are challenged to become among the top five in the world in their chosen sectors 1

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• The initiative aims to bring back Indian talent from abroad, reversing the brain drain 1

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• 367 datasets have already been uploaded to AI Kosha, India's open repository of curated AI datasets 1

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IndiaAI Mission Progress

The IndiaAI Mission has made significant strides in various areas:

• Received 506 foundation AI proposals across three phases 2

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• Extended the deadline for submissions under phase 3 due to overwhelming response 2

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• Launched AI Kosh, a platform providing datasets, models, and use cases to enable AI innovation 2

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Source: ET

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Industry Collaboration

The mission operates through public-private partnerships, with several companies empaneled for GPU sourcing:

• Netmagic (NTT Global), Cyfuture India, Sify Digital Services, Vensysco Technologies, Locuz Enterprise Solutions, Yotta Data Services, and Ishan Infotech 1

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Future Outlook

The IndiaAI Mission aims to create a comprehensive ecosystem for AI development in India:

Source: AIM

• Focus on foundational models, compute capacity, safety standards, and talent development 3

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• A budget of INR 10,372 Cr has been approved for the mission, spanning five years 3

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• The initiative seeks to democratize technology access and develop new solutions for a larger section of society 3

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As these projects progress, India is positioning itself as a significant player in the global AI landscape, with a strong emphasis on indigenous development and linguistic diversity.