Does India's new AI model live up to claims of rivalling China's DeepSeek? CNA puts it to the test
CNA
Launched at a landmark event in India recently, homegrown firm Sarvam AI claims its new 105-billion-parameter model can rival China’s DeepSeek at a fraction of the computational cost. CNA tests how it stacks up against global peers.
SINGAPORE: In recent years, India’s artificial intelligence (AI) ambitions have been accompanied by a persistent perception.
It is that while the country excels at building AI-powered software, it has yet to produce a frontier foundational model capable of standing shoulder-to-shoulder with global leaders such as OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, DeepSeek, or Alibaba’s Qwen.
These perceptions surfaced again at the recent India AI Impact Summit in February, when India’s homegrown firm Sarvam AI unveiled a 105-billion-parameter (105B) model alongside a 30B model, marking the company’s most ambitious effort yet.
Four other Indian firms unveiled their own large language models (LLMs) at the event, including Gnani.ai’s two speech-focused foundation models, BharatGen’s 17-billion-parameter Param 2, Tech Mahindra’s 8-billion-parameter Hindi education model, and Fractal Analytics’ healthcare-focused AI system. However, these were either smaller in scale or tailored to specific use cases.
Sarvam AI said both of its models were built from scratch, unlike its earlier Sarvam-M model launched in May 2025, which was built on top of Mistral’s Small model.
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