1,000 GPUs To Be Procured Under IndiaAI Mission As part of its ambitious India AI Mission, the government has finalized a tender document to purchase 1,000 graphics processing units (GPUs) and provide computing capacity to Indian researchers, start-ups, public sector agencies, and other entities approved by the government, reportedly.

As part of its ambitious India AI Mission, the government has finalized a tender document to purchase 1,000 graphics processing units (GPUs) and provide computing capacity to Indian researchers, start-ups, public sector agencies, and other entities approved by the government, reportedly. In the tender, data localization has also been taken into consideration.

This action is a part of the Rs 10,370 crore IndiaAI Mission, which aims to build foundational models with a capacity of over 100 billion parameters trained on datasets covering major Indian languages for priority sectors like healthcare, agriculture, and governance. It also establishes a computing capacity of more than 10,000 GPUs. The concept is that start-ups might use the nation's existing AI infrastructure to develop AI systems.

Aside from algorithmic creativity and data sets, one of the most crucial components of developing a huge AI system is compute, or computing capability. Because of the high cost, it is also one of the hardest components for smaller organizations to acquire in order to train and develop such AI systems.

The first stage of the IndiaAI Mission's implementation is the tender, which is for a tenth of the GPUs that were initially envisioned. It follows the Union Budget 2024, which allotted Rs 551.75 crore for the program to the Ministry of Electronics and IT. The Indian Express had stated last month that the tender was finished and will be released shortly. The tender said that IndiaAI aims to provide AI services on cloud platforms and make them available to research community members, universities, MSMEs, startups, governments, public sector agencies, and other recognized entities.

A group of affiliated businesses may submit a proposal, with one serving as the principal partner and the others as secondary, according to the paper. Three partners will be the most that a consortium can have. Only Indian companies formed under the Companies Act of 1956, the LLP Act of 2008, or the Partnership Act of 1932 are eligible to bid.

Providers of data centers, suppliers of cloud services, or system integrators with expertise implementing cloud computing could be consortium members. A consortium's principal partner needs to have generated more than Rs 100 crore in revenue on average over the previous three fiscal years. Delivering all AI services from Indian data centers is one of the tender's main requirements. "Any form of data (anonymous, pseudonymous, encrypted, etc.) uploaded to their cloud platform by end users should not be sent outside the sovereign territory of India," the tender stated.

The winning bidder will be required to guarantee that AI compute capacity is available for use; requests for up to 100 AI compute hours must be fulfilled right away, requests for up to 500 AI compute hours must be fulfilled in two days, and requests for more than 500 hours of AI compute must be fulfilled in a week.

The public-private partnership model would be used to develop the computer infrastructure as part of India's Rs 10,370 crore plan, with 50% funding for the viability gap. The private firm will need to deploy additional compute capacity within the same budgeted amount in order to fulfill greater demand if compute prices decline. A total of Rs 4,564 crore has been set aside for the construction of computer infrastructure.