Global AI race: India to build own foundational models; 18,693 GPUs to power compute facility

New Delhi: India on Thursday outlined global AI ambitions with plans to build its own ‘foundational model’ that could take on the might of ChatGPT, Deepseek R1 and others, as it lined up “most affordable” common compute facility powered by 18,693 GPUs to be used by startups and researchers. India’s bold move comes at a time when Chinese company DeepSeek has turned heads after its AI model overtook ChatGPT as the top-ranked free app on Apple’s appstore, challenging the AI dominance concentrated so far with the US firms, particularly Silicon Valley frontrunner Open AI.