Govt Receives 67 Proposals For Building AI Foundational Model

SUMMARY

Homegrown AI startups such as Sarvam AI, CoRover.ai, and Ola’s Krutrim have submitted proposals for building LLMs

MeitY is setting up a “high-level technical committee” to evaluate the said proposals and the panel will take a call on the applications in a month

This comes a month after MeitY invited applications from Indian startups for building an India-specific AI foundational model under the INR 10,370 Cr IndiaAI Mission

The union government has reportedly received at least 67 proposals for building an indigenously-designed and developed artificial intelligence (AI) foundational model.

A senior government official told The Indian Express that the applications also include proposals to build 20 large language models (LLMs). As per the report, homegrown AI startups such as Sarvam AI, CoRover.ai and Ola’s Krutrim have submitted applications for building the LLMs.

“Of the total 67 proposals, 20 proposals have been received for building large language models. The remaining are sector-specific small language models, including one which has been created by a group of doctors to assist medical professionals working on breast cancer issues,” the official reportedly added.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Electronics and Information technology (MeitY) is reportedly setting up a “high-level technical committee” to evaluate the said proposals. The panel, which will reportedly comprise experts from “outside”, will review the applications and take a call on their feasibility in a month.

This comes a month after MeitY invited applications from Indian startups and enterprises for building an India-specific AI foundational model under the government’s flagship INR 10,370 Cr IndiaAI Mission.

The development comes weeks after union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said that India would build its own foundational AI model in the next 10 months. At the time, the minister also said that the country would be able to develop its own high-end graphics processing unit (GPU) in the next three to five years.

While inviting proposals from startups and researchers earlier this month, IndiaAI Mission said that the project will look to develop a scalable foundational AI model, which should be trained on diverse datasets and demonstrate capabilities to address India-specific challenges and opportunities across sectors.

As part of this, the Centre has expressed willingness to offer both equity-based funding as well as compute credits for the selected entity(s) that will undertake the task.

Meanwhile the union government has also empanelled ten companies to supply 18,693 GPUs for developing the foundational model including the likes of Jio Platforms, Yotta, Tata Communications, E2E Networks, among others.