Soket AI, Gnani.ai & Gan.ai To Develop Indigenous AI Models

SUMMARY

While Soket AI Labs will develop India’s first open source 120 Bn parameter foundational model, Gnani.ai will build a 14 Bn parameter voice AI foundation model

Gan.ai will create a 70 Bn parameter multilingual foundational model, which will boast "superhuman TTS” capabilities at par with current global leaders

The government received 506 applications till April 30 since the launch of the call for proposals under the IndiaAI Mission in January this year

After SarvamAI, the IT ministry has now selected three more AI startups – Soket AI Labs, Gnani.ai and Gan.ai – to build large language models (LLMs) under the IndiaAI mission.

In a statement, the IT ministry said that Soket AI Labs will develop India’s first open source 120 Bn parameter foundational model optimised for the country’s linguistic diversity. The model will target use cases in sectors such as defence, healthcare and education.

Meanwhile, Gnani.AI will build a 14 Bn parameter Voice AI foundational model to offer multilingual and real-time speech processing with advanced reasoning capabilities. Further, Gan.ai will create a 70 Bn parameter multilingual foundational model, which will boast “superhuman TTS” (text-to-speech) capabilities at par with current global leaders.

The project will be undertaken under the aegis of the foundational model pillar under the IndiaAI Mission, which aims to develop and deploy indigenous functional models trained on India-specific data.

The government received 506 applications till April 30 this year since the launch of the call for proposals under the IndiaAI Mission in January this year, the IT ministry said.

“We’re proud to lead the way in developing voice-to-voice large language models for India and the world, because we believe transformative AI must speak the language of the people it serves,” said Ganesh Gopalan, cofounder and CEO of Gnani.ai.

Founded in 2017 by Gopalan and Ananth Nagaraj, Gnani.ai currently has speech engines (software that converts written text into spoken audio) for 10 Indian languages. Its client base includes TVS Credit, Bajaj Group, Fibe and Muthoot Finance. The startup has filed over 12 patents to date.

Meanwhile, Soket AI Labs, incorporated in 2019 by Abhishek Upperwal, claims to have built the country’s first open-source multilingual model on top of TinyLlama, which leverages Meta’s Llama 2 architecture. Part of NVIDIA’s Inception Programme and AWS Activate, the startup claims to be building full-stack AI solutions for enterprises.

Gan.ai, founded in 2021 by Suvrat Bhooshan, claims to specialise in creating and using AI-powered avatars for video communication. It leverages generative adversarial networks (GANs) to generate realistic and lifelike avatars that can deliver personalised messages.

This comes a month after the Centre shortlisted Bengaluru-based GenAI startup Sarvam AI to helm the project to build India’s first homegrown sovereign LLM.

SarvamAI has reportedly received a dedicated compute infrastructure to build the model from scratch. The model will focus on reasoning, support voice-based tasks and work fluently across Indian languages. It is being designed for secure, population-scale use. Notably, the LLM will be fully developed, deployed and optimised within the country, using local talent and infrastructure.

It is expected that the three newly selected startups will also receive similar sops and incentives to create their respective LLMs.

India’s AI Mission Takes Shape

IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw yesterday urged the newly selected teams to aim for “top-five global positions” in their respective sectors.

“Technology should not be left in the hands of a few. It’s very important that a larger section of the society should be able to access technology, develop new solutions and get better opportunities. That’s the philosophy with which IndiaAI Mission was created. We are making significant progress in practically every pillar of the AI mission. Common compute is a very important principle of democratizing technology,” said Vaishnaw.

In a statement, the IT ministry said India’s national compute capacity has crossed the 34,000 graphics processing unit (GPU) mark.

This comes a few days after Vaishnaw reportedly said that the government was all set to procure an additional 14,000 GPUs under the IndiaAI mission. This was in addition to the 18,000 GPUs already procured by the Centre in the past few months.

Meanwhile, Vaishnaw also noted that 367 datasets have already been uploaded on the AI Kosh portal. For context, the platform offers access to datasets, AI models, and tools to accelerate AI innovation in the country.

The minister reiterated that IndiaAI Mission will look to create a comprehensive ecosystem, encompassing foundational models, compute capacity, safety standards, and talent development initiatives, to make the country an AI hub.

The Union Cabinet approved the IndiaAI Mission in March 2024, with an outlay of INR 10,372 Cr spanning a period of five years. It comprises initiatives such as IndiaAI Compute Capacity, IndiaAI Innovation Centre (IAIC), IndiaAI Datasets Platform, IndiaAI Application Development Initiative, IndiaAI FutureSkills, IndiaAI Startup Financing, and Safe & Trusted AI.