India AI needs a deep market

China’s development of its foundational artificial intelligence (AI) model, DeepSeek, has inadvertently settled a crucial debate in India: whether to invest in large language models (LLMs) or focus on small language models (SLMs). Some tech industry leaders have argued that SLMs should be the priority, given their commercial viability and India’s expertise in service-oriented AI applications. However, with China successfully launching DeepSeek at a lower cost than Western alternatives, India can no longer afford to sideline foundational AI model development.