IndiaAI Receives Over 500 Foundation Model Proposals

SUMMARY

Due to overwhelming response, the deadline for submission under Phase 3 of the call for proposals was extended to April 30

Previously, the government extended the deadline for the third phase from April 15 to April 22

Notably, 120 applications came in the second round, while the Mission received 67 proposals in the initial round

As the country accelerates its efforts to build AI infrastructure, IndiaAI Mission said it has received 506 proposals to build the AI foundational models across three phases.

“Given the overwhelming response and continued interest, the deadline for submission under Phase 3 of the call for proposals was extended, with the revised deadline being April 30,” IndiaAI Mission said on its website.

Given the overwhelming response and continued interest, the mission has decided to extend the deadline for submissions under phase 3 of the call for proposals. The earlier deadline was April 30.

Of the total bids, the Centre received 120 applications in the second round and around 67 proposals were received in the initial round.

The IndiaAI Mission also said that as part of the first phase of approvals, one startup is picked to initiate the development of an indigenous foundational model, while further selections are expected to be announced shortly.

The government engaged in the process of floating a proposal to build an Indian foundational AI model, earlier in January this year, as “foreign” foundational models are trained on western data sets and are not aligned with Indian languages and situations.

Earlier this year, when emerging reasoning models such as DeepSeek-R1 and DeepSeek-R1-Zero of Chinese AI company DeepSeek stirred the world’s technology operations, Union IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw announced that India would build its own large language model (LLM), as part of its IndiaAI Mission.

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

Meanwhile, the Centre has received bids to propose 18,000 GPUs earlier this week, where only 15,000 will be offered after the entire process, as part of the second round of graphics processing unit (GPU) tender under the IndiaAI mission.

Earlier this month, the IndiaAI Mission additionally established IndiaAI Safety Institute to ensure that AI developed, deployed, and adopted in the country is safe, secure, inclusive, and used in a trustworthy manner, protecting the citizens from any harm from its action.