BharatGen is highest-funded AI entity with $112-mn grant

BharatGen, a nonprofit consortium incubated in Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Bombay and formally launched 10 months ago, has become the highest-funded Indian AI entity with over ₹988 crore ($112 million) from the union government.

- Shouvik Das [e-mail]

Thursday, the ministry of electronics and information technology announced the third tranche of investments under its $1.2-billion IndiaAI Mission, selecting eight startups and nonprofit organisations to incentivise built-from-scratch large AI models, as well as datasets in multiple Indian languages.

BharatGen, was the largest recipient of the ministry’s net outlay of around $170 million (₹1,500 crore), having proposed to build AI models with upto one trillion data parameters in training. Most of these incentives will be in the form of access to graphics processing unit (GPU) chips, which account for up to 90% of the cost of infrastructure for companies that build AI models.

It received the ministry approval to use 13,642 Nvidia GPUs for 12 months to train its models. Two senior officials said estimated net outlay for BharatGen alone was $100 million (₹860 crore), or nearly 60% of total AI model spending.