The government has invited bids for the empanelment of entities providing artificial intelligence (AI) services on the cloud under the Rs 10,372-crore IndiaAI mission. The mission was approved by the cabinet in March this year. The selected companies will provide high computing services to various organizations at competitive rates.
Under the IndiaAI mission, the empaneled agencies, including data centers and cloud service providers, will offer access to high-speed computing AI infrastructure such as graphics processing units (GPUs), accelerators, Tensor Processing Units (TPUs), and storage to academia, startups, researchers, and government bodies. These services will be available at the lowest rates, determined through a competitive bidding process. The mission aims to foster an AI ecosystem by making supercomputing capacity, comprising over 10,000 GPUs, available to various stakeholders.
Empaneling AI service providers
Abhishek Singh, Additional Secretary, MeitY, said in a social media post, “With an objective to empanel service providers for this mission, IndiaAI, under the Digital India Corporation, MeitY, has issued a request for empanelment (RFE).”
There has been a global surge in demand for GPU-based servers due to their higher data processing speed compared to CPU-based servers. Currently, the rate of accessing GPU-based cloud services in India is estimated to be double that of countries with a significant number of installed GPUs.
According to the bid document floated by the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY), the empaneled agencies will be responsible for offering high-performance computing, network, and storage services crucial for the IndiaAI Mission initiatives. These initiatives include the development of indigenous large language models (like ChatGPT) and other AI applications. The document stated, “IndiaAI will approve the end-users who can access these cloud-based AI services, ensuring that the services are provided at prices determined through a transparent and competitive process.
The empaneled AI service providers will be engaged for a period of 36 months, with the possibility of extension based on mutually agreed terms.”
The document clarifies that the ‘Invitation for Application’ is not an offer to enter into a procurement agreement but an invitation to receive proposals from eligible and interested bidders.
