Govt tech support for local AI models

Compute firepower with subsidies coming soon: Vaishnaw

- Gulveen Aulakh & Shouvik Das

India is set to join the global AI race by launching foundational artificial intelligence (AI) models on the lines of OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google's Gemini, and China's DeepSeek RL over the next few months, according to the country's IT minister.

"The foundational models made in India will be able to compete with the best of the best in the world," electronics and information technology minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said at a press briefing on Thursday. "With algorithmic efficiency, we can create these models in a much shorter time frame. We will have a world-class foundational AI model in just a few months."

The development comes in the backdrop of the debut of DeepSeek RL on 20 January, which rattled global AI pioneers with its inexpensive model built at a fraction of the cost taken to create ChatGPT and other models.

Foundational AI models can perform a wide range of tasks and form the bedrock for creating AI applications. Large-scale datasets and high-end GPUs (graphics processing units) are required for training foundational AI models. Currently, GPUs made by US-based Nvidia dominate the foundational AI ecosystem, followed by other chipmakers such as AMD and Intel.

To support the training required to build the foundational AI model, India's central government will launch a common compute facility with 18,693 GPUs, of which the first 10,000 GPUs will come online shortly, Vaishnaw said.