IndiaAI Mission: Govt Eases GPU Norms To Facilitate More Participation Of Smaller Firms

The government has reportedly eased the eligibility criteria for the procurement of 10,000 Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) under the IndiaAI mission to allow more participation of smaller companies and startups.

According to a Moneycontrol report, the IT ministry has reduced the turnover requirement for bidding companies and adjusted the AI compute unit specifications.

These changes were made after companies raised concerns during a pre-bid meeting in September, saying that the initial tender terms were too restrictive for smaller businesses.

The turnover requirement for primary bidders has been reduced from INR 100 Cr to INR 50 Cr, while for non-primary consortium members, it has been halved to INR 25 Cr, as per the documents dated September 27.

In the original tender, bidders were required to have at least 1,000 AI compute units on their cloud platform. While this remains unchanged, the government has lowered the performance specifications.

Initially, the AI compute units needed to meet 15 TFLOPS for FP32, 300 TFLOPS for FP16, and have 40 GB of compute memory. The new requirements have reduced FP16 to 150 TFLOPS and AI memory to 24 GB.

Additionally, bidders can now provide a bank guarantee for future AI compute units, giving them six months post-agreement to meet the requirement.

Earlier this year, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) secretary S Krishnan had reportedly said that the government may tap into “viability gap funding (VGF) to create more “compute capacity”.

It is pertinent to note that in March the Cabinet approved the IndiaAI Mission with an allocation of INR 10,372 Cr over the next five years.

Notably, of the total INR 10,372 Cr outlay for the AI Mission, more than INR 4,500 cr has been earmarked for compute capacity.

Under the Mission, the government is currently planning to build a cutting-edge, scalable AI computing infrastructure by deploying more than 10,000 GPUs– which will be made available to various stakeholders including startups, MSMEs and institutions at subsidised rates. 

Indian authorities have proposed to pay up to 50% of the GPU cost by giving vouchers to various institutions and others.

Driving this push is India’s AI boom. The country now hosts over 100 startups that have raised more than $600 Mn between 2019 and the first half of 2024.

According to an Inc42 report, India’s Generative AI market is projected to surge, surpassing $17 Bn by 2030.