Govt To Offer 100% Compute Subsidy To Sarvam, Others For Foundational Models: Report

SUMMARY

The government is reportedly offering a 100% subsidy to companies building foundational AI models like Sarvam AI for their compute infrastructure costs

The new subsidy will apply to the development of foundational models

Other AI workloads like inference or vertical applications will fall under the 40% subsidy bracket

In an effort to ramp up India’s artificial intelligence capabilities, the Centre is reportedly offering a 100% subsidy on compute infrastructure costs to Sarvam AI and other companies building foundational AI models.

The new subsidy will exclusively apply to the development of foundational models and the existing 40% subsidy will support other AI workloads, a Moneycontrol report said, citing sources.

Earlier this year, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) announced that it would provide a 40% subsidy for common compute access. The Ministry said that India’s AI model computation will cost less than INR 100 per hour after 40% government subsidy as compared to global models computation costing $2.3-3 per hour.

“This is not a 40% scheme like others, foundational model efforts are being given 100% subsidy on compute,” sources told Moneycontrol.

Other AI workloads like inference or vertical applications will fall under the 40% subsidy bracket, it added.

So far, the government has selected four startups- Sarvam AI, Soket AI Labs, Gnani.ai and Gan.ai – to build foundational models under the IndiaAI mission.

The Union Cabinet approved the IndiaAI Mission in March 2024, with an outlay of INR 10,372 Cr spanning a period of five years. The funds will be used to foster innovation in the homegrown AI ecosystem and implement the Mission’s vision via a public-private partnership (PPP) model.

The mission 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.

Foundational AI Models In Progress

While Sarvam was selected to build India’s first homegrown sovereign large language model (LLM) in April, the others got approval in May.

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.

Besides, the LLM will be fully developed, deployed and optimised within the country, using local talent and infrastructure.

Meanwhile, Soket AI Labs will be developing India’s first open source 120 Bn parameter foundational model optimised for linguistic diversity. The model will target use cases in sectors such as defence, healthcare and education.

Gnani.AI will build a 14 Bn parameter Voice AI foundational model to offer multilingual and real-time speech processing with advanced reasoning capabilities and 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.

It must be noted that 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 selection of the total number of companies will be in sync with the final GPU capacity India is able to provide.

Companies Look For Compute Cost Support

The IT ministry said India’s national compute capacity has crossed the 34,000 graphics processing unit (GPU) mark. At least 15,916 GPUs were added to the existing 18,417 empanelled GPUs. However, these new GPUs are yet to go live.

Recently, Soket AI founder and CEO Abhishek Upperwal told Inc42 that its proposal to the government had two key facets — GPU support and a grant request of INR 14.5 Cr.

“GPU support is one thing, but we will still require a lot of money for curating, clearing, and training datasets. That’s why we asked for a small cash component. We don’t yet have a proper sanction letter stating that we will get the cash. My assumption is that the Centre will allow us GPU support… The cash part is uncertain,” said Upperwal.

Gnani.ai founder and CEO Ganesh Gopalan is also expecting computational support from the government. He said that the government is looking to solve major problems such as making GPUs more accessible and bringing down the cost of building LLMs.

IndiaAI Mission is looking 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.