TLDR: Vivek Raghavan, co-founder of Sarvam AI, has strongly advocated for India to develop its own sovereign AI ecosystem. He emphasizes that this initiative is crucial for national control, resilience, and global relevance in the rapidly evolving landscape of artificial intelligence, particularly Generative AI. This move aims to secure strategic autonomy by building foundational AI capabilities tailored to India’s unique requirements, leveraging its success in digital public goods like Aadhaar and UPI.
Vivek Raghavan, a prominent technologist and co-founder of Sarvam AI, has underscored the critical necessity for India to establish its own sovereign Artificial Intelligence (AI) ecosystem. Speaking on August 14, 2025, Raghavan articulated that the drive for a sovereign AI is not about isolation but rather about ensuring control, fostering resilience, and maintaining global relevance in the face of a transformative technological shift .
Raghavan highlighted Generative AI (GenAI) as a pivotal inflection point, poised to reshape economies and societies on a fundamental level, marking it as the most significant wave of technological change in decades. He stressed that this nascent technology has the potential to permeate every aspect of life, from individual choices to national governance. Given India’s robust economic momentum, demographic strength, and geopolitical standing, it cannot afford to remain on the sidelines. Instead, it must actively participate in shaping the technology and the global narrative surrounding its use, impact, and governance .
According to Raghavan, the development of a sovereign AI ecosystem in India is a strategic imperative. Its purpose is not to decouple from the global technological landscape but to secure strategic autonomy by cultivating foundational AI capabilities that specifically address the country’s diverse needs. Foundational AI models are rapidly becoming the underlying infrastructure for various sectors, including education, governance, finance, and science. For a nation of India’s scale, with its vast linguistic diversity and strategic importance, it is crucial to build these core systems domestically rather than merely adopting external ones .
India’s readiness for such an endeavor is bolstered by its proven success in creating digital public goods like Aadhaar and UPI, which have achieved unparalleled scale, trust, and reach across a billion people. This track record provides a blueprint for how India can effectively scale AI systems nationwide . Raghavan further elaborated on the concept of sovereign AI, stating, “We have always wanted to think of the concept of sovereign AI… how do you control your own data, your own models and your own compute?”
Sarvam AI, co-founded by Raghavan and Pratyush Kumar in July 2023, is at the forefront of this national initiative. The startup aims to make Generative AI accessible at scale across India . Sarvam AI has already launched Sarvam 2B, touted as India’s first open-source foundational small language model, specifically designed with a focus on Indic languages. This model, trained with 4 trillion tokens, reportedly outperforms Meta’s Llama in Indian languages .
The Union government, under the ambitious INR 10,370 Crore IndiaAI Mission, has selected Sarvam AI to build India’s sovereign Large Language Model (LLM). This groundbreaking initiative will provide Sarvam AI with dedicated compute resources to develop an indigenous foundational model from scratch. This model is envisioned to be capable of reasoning, designed for voice interactions, and fluent in Indian languages, ensuring secure, population-scale deployment .
Also Read:
- Indian AI Startups Witness Significant Funding Surge, Reaching $665 Million in First Seven Months of 2025
- RBI Forges Ahead with Ethical AI Framework for India’s Financial Sector
Raghavan’s call for sovereign AI comes amidst a global AI race and rising concerns about ‘digital colonialism,’ as echoed by Tata Sons chairman N. Chandrasekharan . The Indian AI ecosystem is projected to grow significantly, with market opportunities estimated to reach $17 billion by 2030 . India is home to over 200 GenAI startups, which collectively raised more than $1.2 billion in funding between 2020 and 2024 . The government has also identified 10 companies to supply 18,693 Graphics Processing Units (GPUs), essential high-end chips for developing foundational AI models .
