New Delhi: The government announced on Saturday that homegrown startup Sarvam AI has been chosen to build the nation’s first indigenous artificial intelligence (AI) foundational model.

Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw revealed that Sarvam AI was shortlisted from among 67 proposals to develop India's first indigenous AI foundation model. Speaking at an event to launch the guidelines for the Electronics Components Manufacturing Scheme (ECMS) here, the minister added that two to three more startups would soon join the initiative.

"We are confident that Sarvam’s models will be competitive with global models," said Vaishnaw.

“The ECMS is a horizontal scheme. It will feed into various sectors, electronic, automotive and so on,” the minister added.

Founded by Dr Vivek Raghavan and Pratyush Kumar, Sarvam AI secured $41 million in its Series A funding round in December 2023. The round was led by Lightspeed, with participation from Peak XV Partners and Khosla Ventures, run by Vinod Khosla.

Dr Raghavan said, “We are humbled by the responsibility bestowed upon us to build India’s sovereign model, and we are ready to build AI that reaches every corner of the country".

"This is a crucial step toward building critical national AI infrastructure. Our goal is to build multi-modal, multi-scale foundation models from scratch. When we do, a universe of applications unfolds. For citizens, this means interacting with AI that feels familiar, not foreign. For enterprises, this means unlocking intelligence without sending their data beyond borders," he added.

Taking a major step to strengthen India’s AI ecosystem, the Prime Minister Narendra Modi government in 2024 approved the India AI Mission, allocating ₹10,300 crore over the next five years to drive the various components of the IndiaAI mission.

To enhance access to high-quality datasets for AI technology development, the government recently launched AIKosha, the sovereign datasets platform, along with the AI Compute Portal under the India AI Mission.

The government has also set a target of developing GPUs domestically within the next three to five years. This is part of the larger ₹10,000-crore IndiaAI Mission.

The AI Compute Portal will allow companies to access subsidised GPUs for research and development. As of now, about 14,000 GPUs have gone live, with another 4,000 in the pipeline.

Earlier, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) had announced the procurement of 18,693 GPUs from selected vendors.

IANS