Will India's 20 selected foundation model proposals actually produce a globally competitive AI model?
The IndiaAI Mission has selected 20 indigenous foundation model proposals, including 12 large multimodal models and 8 small language models, from more than 500 applications. The mission has also expanded shared GPU compute capacity to over 45,000 units to support this development. Whether any of these efforts can compete globally depends heavily on how their compute allocation compares with the far larger budgets used by leading international labs.
The government selected 20 foundation model proposals from over 500 applications received.
Shared GPU compute capacity under the mission had expanded to more than 45,000 units as of mid-2026.
This compute scale remains well below what leading global AI labs typically use to train frontier-scale models.