India’s large language model (LLM) is expected to be ready within the next 10 months, said the Minister of Electronics and IT Ashwini Vaishnaw on Thursday.
“We have created the framework, and it is being launched today. Our focus is on building AI models that maintain the Indian context and culture,” he said at a press conference on the India AI Mission.
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He said the project will be supported by the India AI Compute Facility which has procured 18,693 GPUs to facilitate the creation of a LLM designed specifically for India.
The minister also emphasised India’s AI capabilities by comparing the country’s infrastructure to global benchmarks.
“DeepSeek AI was trained on 2,000 GPUs, ChatGPT was trained on 25,000 GPUs, and we now have 15,000 high-end GPUs available. India now has a robust compute facility that will support our AI ambitions,” a media report quoted him as saying.
“The technical partners started working and investing well before the finalisation.This facility will be available for everyone to use,” Vaishnaw added.
The IT minister also praised Chinese startup DeepSeek for shaking up the sector with its low-cost AI assistant, likening its frugal approach to his government’s efforts to build a localized AI model.
It is to be highlighted that the DeepSeek has triggered a dramatic rethink on artificial intelligence spending around the world, claiming it took just two months and cost under $6 million to build an AI model using Nvidia’s less-advanced H800 chips.
Downloads of its app recently surpassed OpenAI’s ChatGPT on Apple’s App Store, while the cost and performance of its tools upended industry beliefs that China was years behind U.S. rivals in the AI race.
