Google, Tech Majors Express Interest In India’s AI Compute Infra

SUMMARY

Google, Airtel, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Infosys took part in the pre-bid meeting on March 26 for the second round of applications under the IndiaAI Mission’s GPU initiative

Palo Alto Networks, Salesforce, ST Telemedia, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), IBM, Netweb, NTT, Oracle, Ola Krutrim, and Neysa, and a few others were also part of the meeting

The IndiaAI Mission received around 120 applications in the second round of bidding, which closed on March 15

As the Centre steps up its efforts to develop public AI compute infrastructure under the IndiaAI Mission, the initiative has reportedly attracted interest from a clutch of tech and telecom majors, including Google, Airtel, Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys.

IndiaAI Mission was approved in March last year with an allocation of INR 10,372 Cr over the course of next five years. It aims to create an AI ecosystem, offering supercomputing capabilities comprising over 10,000 GPUs to various stakeholders.

It covers 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.

An ET report, citing people familiar with the matter, said that on March 26, Google, Airtel, TCS and Infosys participated in the pre-bid meeting for the second round of applications under the IndiaAI Mission’s graphics processing unit (GPU) initiative.

The meeting also saw participation from companies such as Palo Alto Networks, Salesforce, ST Telemedia, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), IBM, Netweb, NTT, Oracle, Ola Krutrim, Neysa, AMD, BSNL, Dell, Deloitte, Kyndryl, L&T and NetApp, the report added.

The development comes days after a report surfaced that Reliance Jio and CtrlS, which emerged as the lowest price (L1) bidders in the tender for sourcing GPUs, are set to get AI workloads by the second week of April.

The pre-bid meeting for the second round for GPU tender had a good response and IndiaAI is expecting a lot of companies in the upcoming round, as per reports.

The IndiaAI Mission received around 120 applications in the second round of bidding, which closed on March 15.

Meanwhile, IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw revealed that the evaluation of AI Large Language Model (LLM) applications is in the final leg, and the Centre is looking to finalise the shortlisted entities soon, which would let them secure funding under the IndiaAI Mission.

As per the report, some of the companies may decide to not formally apply at a later stage. The last date to submit the bids in the second round is April 30.

In January, MeitY received offers for 20,000 GPUs, double of what was initially proposed for empanelling companies, earlier this year.

Following which, the Centre reportedly selected ten tech giants including Jio Platforms and Tata Communications for the final bidding process to procure 10,000 graphic processing units (GPUs) under the IndiaAI Mission.