Ola's Krutrim Announces India's First AI Chip, Set for 2026 Launch

Ola Krutrim Brings an Early Diwali for Indian AI Developers

"A lot can happen in six months," Ola chief Bhavish Aggarwal, revealed a bunch of announcements about its AI venture Krutrim at Sankalp 2024. The launch of Krutrim six months ago has led to several chains of events, including the Microsoft Azure Cloud and Google Maps exit. Now, Krutrim is finally showing its love for Indian developers. Apart from a bunch of announcements about electric bikes and the launch of BharatCell, the event was fully dedicated to Krutrim's announcements and future roadmap. According to the company, since its launch six months back, Krutrim Cloud has received around 250 billion API calls and has around 25k developers using the platform, with one trillion tokens generated so far. Aggarwal also added that the company aims to build India's first AI cloud in its own data centres which will be powered by the company's own Bodhi chips, slated to be released by 2026, with Bodhi 2 by 2028. Moreover, Krutrim Cloud will be free for developers till Diwali this year. Krutrim has announced a significant expansion of its cloud services, unveiling over 50 new offerings on its Krutrim Cloud platform. These services are designed to cater specifically to the needs of Indian developers and include AI Pods, AI Studio, a language hub with multimodal translation capabilities, and customer experience AI. Back in May, the AI unicorn launched its first LLM, Krutrim-7B-chat, trained on ten Indian languages, on the Databricks Marketplace for free. This was announced by Gautam Bhargava, VP and head of AI engineering at Krutrim. This time, Bhargava announced that Krutrim has the best Indic tokeniser when compared to GPT-4o and Gemini, but falls behind when compared to Llama 3.1. Moreover, speaking about the speech models, Krutrim model is on par with AI4Bharat's IndicTrans2, but beats Gemini and Azure. When it comes to visual world understanding, Krutrim's model competes closely with Idefics-2. Krutrim is also launching another AI developer app called Bhashik, a multimodal language hub that can translate videos into different languages. "This event is currently being live-streamed in multiple languages through the Bhashik platform," said Aggarwal. He also said that edtech startup Unacademy is also leveraging Ola Krutrim's translation API for its language learning app. During a scripted demo, Ola Krutrim previewed an upcoming image recognition feature that will be added to the AI model later this year. Aggarwal also showcased how Dashtoon, an early stage startup, uses Krutrim AI Cloud for training and fine-tuning its models. When it comes to Ola Maps, Aggarwal mentioned that it is expanding its API for developers to encompass over 95 per cent of use cases, including routing, places, maps, tiles, and SDKs. Moreover, another startup, Together, is using Ola Maps for enhancing its customer experience, competing with MapmyIndia. "It is the best maps out there," added Aggarwal. For developers, Ola unveiled AI Pods for affordable GPU access, an AI Studio for creating complex AI applications, a model catalogue featuring LLMs and vision models, as well as capabilities for no-code/low-code training, fine-tuning, inference, and model evaluation. Starting today, Krutrim Cloud on AI Studio will be available for developers and provide no-code and low-code computing platforms tailored for Indian use cases, along with offerings like GPU-as-a-service and model-as-a-service, with Krutrim H100 tiny for 1/25th of the price on AI Pods, which is an abstraction service with GPU slicing for resource efficiency. Moreover, Ola has also launched the Udaan startup programme. Startups will get Ola Maps credit worth up to Rs 50 lakhs free for three years on Krutrim Cloud and access to mentorship and Ola's partner ecosystem. When it comes to building an AI chip in India, Sambit Sahu came on stage and said that the company is on the roadmap to challenge SOTA AI chip performance by 2028 with Krutrim Silicon. Sahu unveiled three distinct chip families -- Bodhi for AI, Sarv for general computing, and Ojas for edge computing. The Bodhi chip is specifically engineered for complex AI workloads. It focuses on enhancing the speed and efficiency of AI systems. By 2028, Krutrim aims to launch Bodhi 2, an advanced version expected to rank among the top-performing AI chips worldwide. It will be able to run ten trillion parameter models. Krutrim also plans to produce its first AI silicon chip by 2026. To achieve its chip development goals, Krutrim has formed strategic partnerships with leading technology firms Arm and Untether AI. "Basically, we would be the best in class in performance per rupee and performance per watt," added Aggarwal. When comparing image classification capabilities, Sahu showcased a demo where Krutrim's Bodhi 1 was able to classify one million images faster than the leading AI chip, possibly NVIDIA's offering. Adding to that, Aggarwal said that Krutrim will set up a gigawatt scale data centre by 2028. Today, the company's capacity is at 20 megawatt. "There is no need for developers to look outside Krutrim," said Aggarwal. Ironically, it looks like Ola Krutrim is also trying hard for the sovereign AI approach, similar to Sarvam AI, and naming its products strikingly similar to already existing ones in the market like Sarv-1 with Sarvam and Bhashik with Bhashini.

Ola to Launch India's First AI Chip in Two Years | Bengaluru News - Times of India

Bengaluru: Ola co-founder and CEO Bhavish Aggarwal on Thursday said that artificial intelligence (AI) sovereignty is absolutely necessary for India and that the country needs to build a future on its terms to control the technologies in the time to come. "Otherwise, we will just end up becoming monthly active user farms for global companies," he told TOI on the sidelines of an event in Hosur that saw new product announcements across Ola's electric vehicle, cab and AI businesses.Ola has its EV factory and its upcoming EV battery making facility in Hosur. The Bengaluru-headquartered company said its AI company Krutrim is working on manufacturing India's first AI silicon chip by 2026. If successful, it will pit Ola against the likes of Nvidia, AMD and Intel. Global technology giants Meta, Google, Apple and Amazon are also making proprietary AI chips. Ola announced strategic partnerships with global majors such as chip design company ARM and Canadian AI company Untether AI to build the chips. At the Hosur event, there was a video message from ARM CEO Rene Haas expressing happiness at partnering with Ola Krutrim. Krutrim's first family of chips include Bodhi for AI, Sarv for general compute, and Ojas for edge compute. The AI chip is expected to enable development of faster and more efficient AI systems. "We are still exploring foundries, we will go with a global tier I or II foundry. Taiwan is a global leader, and so is Korea. I visited Taiwan a couple of months back and the ecosystem is keen on partnering with India," Aggarwal said. Krutrim also launched Krutrim cloud with AI and general-purpose capabilities, in addition to a wide range of purpose-built AI services for the developer community to build products. It has made these data centre services worth Rs 100 crore completely free for developers and enterprises alike till Diwali. New motorcycles: In its EV business, Ola Electric Mobility, the company launched its first set of electric motorcycles due for deliveries from the fourth quarter of the current financial year. Ola Electric Mobility, founded in 2017, also released a beta version of its MoveOS 5 software update, which introduces integrations with Ola Maps and Krutrim AI. The scooter-maker launched Roadster X, Roadster, and Roadster Pro with prices starting from Rs 74,999. It also teased two other new motorcycles, Sportster and Arrowhead. The EV maker expects to integrate its indigenous Bharat 4680 cell into its vehicles starting the first quarter of the financial year ended March 2026. The cell is currently under trial production at Ola's Gigafactory, and will be the first such in India when released. Ola Cabs rebranding, expansion: Ola Cabs, Aggarwal's original ride-sharing business, has been rebranded as Ola Consumer. The business will expand to new cities. Ola Consumer said it will offer one year of free Krutrim Cloud for all ONDC suppliers, applicable for startups and small and medium enterprises. D2C (direct to consumer) brands will also be given one year of free access to Krutrim cloud. Ola food and grocery on ONDC surpassed 40,000 orders per day in Bengaluru in a pilot concluded this year. The company showcased a prototype of a fully automated shipping container-sized dark store, which it plans to manufacture at scale. The containers can process about 7-10,000 orders a day, Aggarwal said. Any ecommerce business can use this to stock products and make deliveries from. The company said it's partnering with ITC, Marico and Bombay Shaving Company on this. Given the growth of quick commerce in India, there could be significant opportunity for these ready-made dark stores.

Ola says it'll launch India's first AI chip in two years - Times of India

BENGALURU: Ola co-founder and CEO Bhavish Aggarwal on Thursday said that artificial intelligence sovereignty is necessary for India and that the country needs to build a future on its terms to control the technologies in the time to come. "Otherwise, we will just end up becoming monthly active user farms for global companies," he told TOI on the sidelines of an event. The Bengaluru-headquartered company said its AI company Krutrim is working on manufacturing India's first AI silicon chip by 2026.If successful, it will pit Ola against the likes of Nvidia, AMD and Intel. Tech giants Meta, Google, Apple and Amazon are also making proprietary AI chips. Ola announced strategic partnerships with global majors such as chip design company ARM and Canadian AI company Untether AI to build the chips. The AI chip is expected to enable development of faster and more efficient AI systems. "We are still exploring foundries, we will go with a global tier I or II foundry. Taiwan is a global leader, and so is Korea. I visited Taiwan a couple of months back and the ecosystem is keen on partnering with India," Aggarwal said. Krutrim also unveiled Krutrim cloud with AI and general-purpose capabilities, in addition to a wide range of purpose-built AI services for the developer community to build products. It has made these data centre services worth Rs 100 crore completely free for developers and enterprises alike till Diwali. New motorcycles: Ola Electric Mobility launched its first set of electric motorcycles due for deliveries from the fourth quarter of the current financial year. The EV maker expects to integrate its indigenous Bharat 4680 cell into its vehicles starting the first quarter of the financial year ended March 2026. The cell is currently under trial production at Ola's Gigafactory, and will be the first such in India when released. Ola Cabs rebranding: Ola Cabs, Aggarwal's ride-sharing business, has been rebranded as Ola Consumer and will expand to new cities. Besides, it will offer one year of free Krutrim Cloud for all ONDC suppliers, applicable for startups and small and medium enterprises. D2C (direct to consumer) brands will also be given one year of free access.

CEO Bhavish Aggarwal announces Ola's first AI chip for India, set for 2026 launch: Everything announced at Sankalp event | Mint

"Our goal is to push the boundaries of AI chip performance by 2028. This is a bold and ambitious project, but we are committed to delivering our first AI chip for India by 2026," Aggarwal stated. The AI chips, named Bodhi-1 and Bodhi-2, will support over 10 trillion parameters, with Bodhi-2 expected to debut by 2028. Krutrim has also made strides in the consumer market by launching an Android app for its AI chatbot in May. The chatbot, which entered public beta in February 2024, is designed to compete with major players like OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google's Gemini, and Microsoft's Copilot. It is powered by Krutrim's multilingual large language models (LLM) and supports over 10 Indian languages, with plans to extend this to all 22 official languages by the end of 2024.

Krutrim To Launch AI Chips By 2026, Expands Cloud Services

Unveiling future plans for Ola Group's third unicorn Krutrim at its annual event, CEO and founder Bhavish Aggarwal announced plans to develop India's first homegrown family of chips for artificial intelligence, general compute and Edge. The family of chips includes Bodhi for AI, Sarv for General Compute, and Ojas for Edge. The startup is targeting to launch the first chip by 2026. Furthermore, Bodhi 2 will be launched by 2028. Krutrim said it has forged strategic partnerships with Arm and Untether AI for the development of CPU and AI chips, platforms, and systems. Aggarwal also said that Krutrim will scale up its data centre capacity to 1 GW by 2028 from the current 20 MW. "The data centre will be a computing and data storage powerhouse, enabling Krutrim to offer world-class AI services to India and the world," the startup said in a statement. "Amidst rapidly changing technology paradigms, India has a unique opportunity to become a global superpower in technologies of the future such as AI. India being the source for 20% of the world's data and home to one of the largest tech talent pools, is fully equipped to lead the AI wave," Aggarwal said. Krutrim said that in order to support the growing demand for AI, traditional and cloud-native application workloads, Krutrim Cloud will expand its services to cover infrastructure domains, developer platforms, data platforms, AI models, AI platforms and AI applications. As of now, the cloud is live for Ola Electric and Ola Consumer (erstwhile Ola Cabs). The group is leveraging the cloud for a language hub with multimodal translation capabilities, customer servicing with AI (Ola group's customer service has been replaced by AI service centre) and Maps APIs & SDKs to enable intelligent search for enterprises. Moving forth, Krutrim Cloud will offer about 50 new services, including virtual machines (VMs), cloud storage, state-of-the-art security measures for data protection, and observability features for precise data monitoring. Krutrim claims that the cloud offers a wide range of purpose-built AI services that can allow Indian developers to reduce costs for technology products. The startup claims that over 25K developers are actively using Krutrim Cloud and 250 Bn API calls have been made across products since its launch. To lure in more developers, the AI unicorn announced free cloud services worth INR 100 Cr for developers till Diwali 2025. It will also allow free access to developers working on the ONDC platform for a year. Further, the startup also launched 'Krutrim for Startups' - Udaan programme with INR 50 lakh for the first cohort of startups in partnership with investors Z47 (formerly Matrix Partners India), DeVC, and South Park Commons.

Bhavish Aggarwal's Krutrim to launch India's first AI chip by 2026

Aggarwal mentioned that Ola Electric and Ola Cabs are already using Krutrim AI. While providing details on how Krutrim has been accepted by Indian developers, Aggarwal said that over 25,000 developers have used Krutrim Cloud, over 10 million users have used the Krutrim chat app, and 250 billion API calls have been made across products since its launch in early 2024. Additionally, over 1 trillion tokens have been generated on Krutrim in the last six months.

What Ola founder Bhavish Aggarwal's AI chip 'moonshot' means

At a launch event -- 'Sankalp 2024' -- in Bengaluru on Thursday, Ola showcased what it called its "own" chip design that will power its foundational model development and its own data centres, and will be used in its own vehicles. The said chip will "challenge state-of-the-art AI chip performance by 2028" the company said on stage -- showing an upward-curve graph that offered no details or metrics. Developing the capability to build chips is not impossible but requires the world's most advanced technology. Even India's government has been making a concerted effort to bring semiconductor manufacturing into the country, but the effort failed the first time, and the progress has been slow. The $10 billion-plus semiconductor production-linked incentives have led to the announcement of only one greenfield chip fabrication plant, or 'fab', so far -- by Tata Electronics and Taiwan's Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (PSMC). The $10 billion project is expected to take at least three years to become operational and will make chips of 'older' nodes. Read more | Bhavish Aggarwal announces Ola's first AI chip for India, set for 2026 launch: Everything announced at Sankalp event For designing chips, something even more challenging, reference designs are built to ensure maximum compatibility with a wide base of developers around the world -- who ensure compatibility across global software platforms. Typically, this takes extensive cross-development with global firms and is not done in silos. "Chipmaking is a complex process and requires dedicated fabs in the country -- as well as adopting ASML's photolithography machines," said Jaspreet Bindra, founder of tech consultancy firm The Tech Whisperer, referring to the Dutch firm that is the only company in the world with the technology. "This typically takes a very long time, even a decade, to establish," he said. Ola, a mobility company that is yet to show any profit, will have to outperform the likes of the US' Nvidia, Intel, Qualcomm and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) -- which have three to five decades of experience in making chips that power not just AI, but the world's greatest supercomputers. Ola announced a partnership with Canada-headquartered Untether AI to build its chips. Untether has no proprietary chip technology and uses Nvidia's reference design. Also read | Ola to roll out portable dark stores for quick commerce, launches first electric motorcycle Kashyap Kompella, a tech analyst and founder of consultancy firm RPA2AI, said Ola needs to provide details. "The company has made a lot of claims, some of which include taking on the world's greatest technology companies with the deepest of pockets, to build something that is not in their domain of expertise," he said. "It would be very important for Ola to furnish proof of their claims on public benchmarks such as MLCommons, if they are to be taken seriously." Ola founder Aggarwal termed his AI ambitions a "moonshot project." The first of Ola's chips, called 'Bodhi 1' with "best-in-class power efficiency", will be ready by 2026, said the company. By 2028, the company aims to introduce 'Bodhi 2', offering "best-in-class performance for AI training, inference and fine-tuning", it said. According to Ola, 'Bodhi 2' will support 10 trillion data-parameter AI models and will be "scalable to exascale computing". Such powerful chips are capable of supporting the best supercomputer is in the world today. Nvidia and AMD design such chips and has taken them decades of research and development (R&D). "It's great to see ambition, but it's important to realize that to make chips like Nvidia, Intel or even AMD, it will take billions of dollars and decades just to get the capability -- let alone four years," said Bindra. "It's important to get key technical details on what these claims are -- and how such development will play out. To create something of the class of a TSMC chip, from absolute zero, is next to impossible. We'll be curious to get more details." Ola linked its ambition to the country's interests. "India has 1.25 lakh chip designers, but not one meaningful chip comes out of India. We're going to change that," claimed Sambit Sahu, vice-president of silicon design at Ola. There are "only one or two companies in the world that are doing well in AI, and they are not accepting India's needs -- whether it is security, data privacy, or our power needs," he said. Kompella of RPA2AI said Ola should shun hyperbole as its shareholder base extends well beyond its venture partners, and into the public sphere.

AI Digest: Sarvam 2B, Ola EVs, Google's AI Overviews in India

This week saw an interesting mix of AI advancements across the world, especially in India as Indian startup Sarvam launched an indigenous AI model, Ola spoke of integrating Krutrim AI into the operating system of their EV scooters while Google introduced AI Overview in India. Indian AI startup Sarvam announced a host of products and services on August 13, 2024. This includes Sarvam 2B, an indigenous Large Language Model trained on 4 trillion tokens, half of which are in Indian languages. The company also released AI voice agents for customer service and sales calls that are capable of speaking in Indian languages. These voice agents will support businesses in healthcare, BFSI and other sectors at Rs 1 per minute. As per the company, Sarvam 2B is capable of translations rivalling advanced models like Llama and Gemma. The AI startup is also catering to the legal community with A1, a generative AI workbench capable of drafting documents, redaction and data extraction. Sarvam AI has also developed a new audio language model called Shuka v1 that directly understands spoken Indic languages. The company has also released a series of APIs for text-to-speech conversion and translation. Ola will be integrating its AI model Krutrim into its electric scooters as part of the MoveOS5 operating system, reported the Indian Express. Earlier in 2017, Ola launched a beta version of the operating system integrated with Krutrim AI and Ola Maps. These changes come at a time when the company is planning to rebrand and expand its cab services as Ola Consumer. Earlier in December last year, Ola launched Krutrim to address the multi-lingual needs of AI models in India. The system had a base model similar to ChatGPT and a multi-model supporting text, speech and video. However, in February this year, when the beta version was opened to the public, users reported inaccurate answers including factual errors and polarizing responses which the company attributed to dataset data leakage. The company also plans to launch a silicon AI chip called Bodhi 1, designed for frontier Large Language Models (LLMs) by 2026. Krutrim is also launching a customer care app in 22 languages that can automate customer care processes. Another app launched by Ola is Bhashik, a multimodal language hub that can translate videos into other languages. Ola Krutrim also plans to launch a new image recognition feature later this year. Tech giant Google launched its AI Overviews feature for Google Search in six new countries, including India, the United Kingdom, Japan, Indonesia, Mexico and Brazil. AI Overviews will be available in both English and Hindi and include other features like easy switches between English and Hindi results and text-to-speech options. However, AI Overviews have been previously criticised for presenting misleading information from unreliable sources like satirical news websites and also for missing the context of the information supplied. Google said at that time, that they would take swift action by removing AI Overview for certain queries. AI Overviews provide an AI-generated summary to search queries based on a specially customised Gemini model, previously released in an experimental version on Google's Search Labs.