Amid questions over India’s place in the global AI race, Union Minister of Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw, on Tuesday, February 4, said that the country will develop its own Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) in the next three to five years, and a domestic foundational AI platform can be expected in the next 10 months.
“We are working on multiple, actually three options, where we take a chipset which is at some reasonable level available in open source or available as a licensed thing, and then build upon that to build our own GPU. That’s the approach the entire world has followed and that approach will be able to give us India’s own GPU in the time frame of three to five years,” Vaishnaw was quoted as saying in a report by PTI.
Once used to process multimedia content in video games, GPUs are in massive demand across the world as they are now used to power foundational AI models. US chip company Nvidia currently dominates the GPU market with over 80 per cent market share.
The IT minister’s remarks come after Chinese AI startup DeepSeek’s upheaval of the tech industry, sparked by the release of its reasoning model that is said to rival other cutting edge foundational AI models on many fronts despite being built at a fraction of the cost.
DeepSeek’s surge in popularity has prompted a discussion about whether India is lagging behind in the AI race that is increasingly perceived to be dominated by the United States of America and China.
Here is a look at the central government’s announcements in the wake of DeepSeek’s rise.
Local foundational AI model
A few days after DeepSeek’s low-cost foundational model rattled tech stocks across markets, Vaishnaw announced that the government is building a domestic large language model (LLM) of its own as part of the Rs 10,370 crore IndiaAI Mission.
He said that the government is in touch with at least six developers, but did not specify how much it would cost to build the model and the companies the government is currently in touch with.
Vaishnaw also said that the government has selected 18 AI-based apps focused on areas such as agriculture, learning disabilities, and climate change to provide the first round of funding under the IndiaAI Mission.
“Over the last 1.5 years, our teams have been working closely with startups, researchers, professors etc. Today, we are calling for proposals to develop our own foundational model. The model will take care of the Indian context, languages, culture, are devoid of biases,” Vaishnaw told reporters.
Referring to research cited by DeepSeek in making its AI models more efficient, Vaishnaw said, “Many of our researchers and startups are also studying some of those papers. There are some papers of 2003 and 2005 which basically tell you how to do a lot of good engineering on the process.”
GPU procurement
Vaishnaw said that the government will make available 18,000 high-end GPU-based compute facilities for AI development to entities in the country in the next couple of days.
“We already embarked 18,000 GPUs, very high-end GPUs, and out of that, 10,000 are already available. So this 18,000 compute power will be rolled out in a couple of days. The tender process got completed last week, and in another couple of days, 3-4 days, this will be rolled out,” Vaishnaw said.
The government has also selected 10 companies that will supply 18,693 GPUs, including the Hiranandani Group-backed Yotta, Jio Platforms, Tata Communications, E2E Networks, CMS Computers, Ctrls Datacenters, Locuz Enterprise Solutions, NxtGen Datacenter, Orient Technologies, and Vensysco Technologies.
Nearly half of the total GPUs will come from Yotta alone, who has committed to offer 9,216 units.
These GPUs are being procured by the central government under the IndiaAI Mission, which was sanctioned Rs 2,000 crore for 2025-26 (a fifth of the scheme’s total outlay of Rs 10,370 crore), as per the Union Budget 2025 proposed by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on February 1.
Sitharaman also announced a new presumptive taxation regime for non-residents providing services in India’s electronics manufacturing sector, a move that could give a fillip to foreign technicians and entities working in the electronics sector in India, and help the country’s aspirations of becoming a semiconductor manufacturing base.
Common GPU compute facility
The government will launch a common compute facility, from where startups and researchers can access the computing power, in the next few days. The cost of accessing higher end GPUs would be Rs 150 per hour, and using lower end GPUs would cost Rs 115.85 per hour.
To further ease access to these services, the government will give a 40 per cent subsidy to end users on the total price.
“Globally, GPU access costs $2.5-$3 per hour. We are making it available, after the subsidy for around $1 per hour,” Vaishnaw said.
“The researchers, startups, academicians, colleges, IITs, all of them can have access to this compute power, and they can start foundational models,” the IT minister was quoted as saying.
Centre of Excellence for AI for education
The government will set up a new centre of excellence for AI for education with an outlay of Rs 500 crore, Sitharaman said during her budget speech.
“I had announced three centres of excellence in artificial intelligence for agriculture, health and sustainable cities in 2023. Now, a centre of excellence in artificial intelligence for education will be set up with a total outlay of Rs 500 crore,” she said.
Sitharaman also revealed plans for five National Centres of Excellence for Skilling, designed to equip youth with industry-relevant expertise.
“These centres will be set up with global partnerships to support Make for India, Make for the World manufacturing,” Sitharaman stated. The initiative will cover curriculum design, training of trainers, a skill certification framework, and regular assessments.
These moves come amid concerns that AI could displace a number of jobs in India. “Although the impact of AI on labour will be felt across the world, the problem is magnified for India, given its size and its relatively low per capita income,” read the Economic Survey 2024-25 released on January 31.
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