• Source:JND
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India’s artificial intelligence ambitions are gathering pace, with the government confirming the next set of projects under the IndiaAI Mission. At the AI Impact Summit 2026 in New Delhi on September 18, IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw announced that eight organisations, including IIT Bombay, Tech Mahindra and Fractal Analytics, will develop foundational large language models (LLMs).

Among them, the most ambitious project comes from IIT Bombay, which will lead the BharatGen consortium. The institute has been tasked with creating an LLM boasting one trillion parameters — a scale that puts it in the league of the largest AI models currently being built anywhere in the world. To enable this effort, the government has sanctioned financial support worth ₹988.6 crore.

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In AI terms, 'parameters' refers to the internal variables that a model learns while training, helping it understand relationships and patterns in data. Reaching the trillion-parameter mark is seen as a landmark step for India, allowing it to position itself alongside global leaders in AI development.

The complete list of chosen entities includes Avataar AI, IIT Bombay Consortium – BharatGen, Fractal Analytics Limited, Tech Mahindra Ltd, Zeinteiq Aitech Innovations, Genloop Intelligence Pvt Ltd, NeuroDX (Intellihealth) and Shodh AI. Each will contribute to building models tailored for different domains.

Tech Mahindra, already known for its Indic AI project, welcomed the recognition. The company said it was “proud to be recognised” as part of the IndiaAI Mission. It added, “This announcement comes on the back of building our own and India’s own Indic LLM, Project Indus. Built completely in-house and at frugal cost, the journey of having Project Indus as open source to creating sovereign LLMs has been a learning and rewarding experience.”

This round follows earlier selections under the mission. In May 2025, startups SoketAI, Gnani.ai and Gan AI were picked to work on foundational models, while a month earlier, firms including Sarvam AI were tapped to build specialised AI systems. To back these teams, the government has also coordinated with cloud and data providers to expand access to GPUs, which are critical for training such large-scale models.

Minister Vaishnaw stressed that progress so far has been encouraging. “The models that were selected earlier are progressing really well, and I am confident that by the time the AI Impact Summit gets underway in February 2026, India will have a model or models ready,” he said.

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Looking ahead, the government plans to release a national AI framework being draughted by MeitY and the Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser. The framework will serve as a guide to ensure responsible development and deployment of AI systems in the country.