Govt Shortlists 7 Companies For Second Round Of GPU Tender

SUMMARY

MeitY has reportedly picked the next set of companies including Amazon Web Service (AWS), Oracle and Google Cloud to offer GPUs

Seven companies have been shortlisted in the second round of graphics processing units (GPU) tender

These companies are invited by the IndiaAI Mission for the technical presentation of their proposals on May 14

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has reportedly shortlisted seven companies, including Amazon Web Service (AWS), Oracle and Google Cloud for the second round of graphics processing units (GPU) tenders under the IndiaAI Mission.

Among the companies shortlisted also include Sify Digital Services, Netmagic IT Services, Vensysco Technologies, Cyfuture India, Yotta Data Services, Locuz Enterprise Solutions and Ishan Infotech, ET reported.

Further, these companies have been invited by the IndiaAI Mission for the technical presentation of their proposals on May 14.

MeitY was looking to add 15K GPUs from the second round through procurement and supply under the IndiaAI Mission. Ten tech companies including E2E, NxtGen and Locuz offered 14,517 GPUs at L1 rates against the tender for 10,000 GPUs, in April.

The new additions eyed by the government, will now take the total number of GPUs to 29,000.

As per the report, Vensysco and Locuz are joining hands with AWS, while Ishan Infotech is partnered with Oracle and NTT-Netmagic is a Google Cloud partner in India.

However, details of their partnership for this bid remain undisclosed.

This development comes shortly after reports revealed that the electronics ministry would offer incentives to startups such as Sarvam AI, Soket AI Labs, Gnani.ai and Gan.ai for building frontier AI models under the mission.

The second round of bidding began in late December last year, that focussed on areas like watermarking and labelling, ethical AI and risk assessment.

Following which, the Centre selected ten tech giants including Jio Platforms and Tata Communications for the final bidding process to procure 18,693 GPUs— high end chips needed to develop machine learning tools that can go into developing a foundational model.

To catch up, the IndiaAI Mission aims to create an AI ecosystem, offering supercomputing capabilities comprising over 10,000 GPUs to various stakeholders. The government has allocated INR 10,372 Cr for this project over the course of five years.

Meanwhile, IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw mentioned that the evaluation of AI Large Language Model (LLM) applications is in the final leg and the government is set to shortlist entities that will secure funding under the mission.