Jio Platforms, Tata Communications, Yotta Data Services, E2E Networks were among the 19 companies to have bid for the government’s tender to procure 10,000 graphics processing units (GPUs), according to a government release on Tuesday.
The overall project cost is Rs 10,000 crore for the IndiaAI mission and out of that the government has earmarked Rs 5,000 crore to create compute infrastructure.
The government has finalised a viability gap funding model, under which it will subsidise compute costs by up to 50% for the startups that want to utilise GPUs. As per the tender document, the selected bidders will have to make available an installed capacity of a minimum of 1,000 AI compute units within six months from the date of signing of the agreement.
Other companies that have submitted bids are Ctrls Datacenters, CloudThat Technologies, CMS Computers, Cyfuture India, Sify Digital, Unicloud, NxtGen Datacenter and Cloud Technologies, among others.
The technical evaluation committee will now begin evaluating the bids received based on the eligibility and technical criteria specified in the tender document. Eligible bidders will be invited to present their proposed solutions during the technical presentation stage, the government said.
The empanelment will be valid for 36 months, with the option to extend for an additional 12 months based on mutually agreed terms.
The AI mission essentially pertains to bringing AI compute capacity under the public-private partnership (PPP) mode through GPU-based servers, allocating early-stage funding to deeptech startups, setting up of innovation centres and developing broader AI sovereign infrastructure in the country.
The compute infrastructure is essential for startups, academia and researchers to test or run their large language models (LLMs) for their AI offerings.
