IndiaAI Mission Receives 120 Bids To Build AI Foundational Models

SUMMARY

The electronics and IT ministry is looking to provide approvals to at least a few applications by the end of March

IndiaAI Mission has received 187 bids so far across two rounds to build indigenously developed AI foundational models

In late January, the IndiaAI Mission invited applications from Indian startups, researchers, and entrepreneurs to collaborate on building foundational AI models

The IndiaAI Mission has reportedly received around 120 applications to build AI foundation models in the second round of bidding, which closed on March 15.

The electronics and IT ministry (MeitY) is looking to provide approvals to at least a few applications by the end of March, ET reported, citing a senior government official.

“We aim to give approval to at least a few proposals by the end of this financial year,” the official said.

The IndiaAI Mission, approved in March 2024 with an allocation of INR 10,372 Cr over the course of next five years, aims to create an AI ecosystem, offering supercomputing capabilities comprising over 10,000 GPUs to various stakeholders.

In the first round, the Mission had received 67 proposals to build indigenously developed AI foundational models. With the second round, the total number of applications received stands at 187.

The official cited in the report said that the received proposals are not only from individuals and firms in India but also from startups with teams in Singapore, San Francisco and other countries.

This comes almost a couple of months after the IndiaAI Mission invited applications from Indian startups, researchers, and entrepreneurs to collaborate on building foundational AI models trained on Indian datasets.

Under the IndiaAI Mission, the Centre has launched several other key initiatives, including the IndiaAI Compute Portal, which will offer affordable AI compute, network, storage and cloud services. Besides, a unified datasets platform AIKosha was also rolled out earlier this month.

This comes at a time when GenAI has taken the world by storm and the technology is seeing rapid adoption in India as well. Earlier this week, the IndiaAI Mission signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Lok Sabha Secretariat to create a repository of linguistic datasets to help build AI models for translating parliamentary debates into multiple languages.