"Did India miss the AI bus?" This is a frequently asked question at recent artificial intelligence-related events in India. Clearly, the progress has been slow. But what is the reason? The answer may lie in how low, and slow, the investment has been in AI startups, foundational AI model development, and research and development (R&amp;D). Here is a status report:<h2>India's research and development funding gap</h2>India's gross expenditure on research and development (GERD) is around 0.64 per cent of GDP. This is below the global average and far behind China, at around 2.6 per cent, and the US, at around 3.6 per cent, according to the <a href="https://power.lowyinstitute.org/data/economic-capability/technology/rnd-spending-of-gdp/">Lowy Institute</a>. Private industry funds only about 36 per cent of total R&amp;D in India, compared with more than 70 per cent in the US, China and South Korea, according to a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace analysis. It also noted that India trails the two top AI leader nations in AI patents granted, reflecting not only a spending gap but also a quality gap.Also read: <a href="https://www.wionews.com/india-news/india-s-digital-paradox-world-class-talent-third-world-capital-wion-expert-speak-1781084191225">India's digital paradox: World-class talent, third-world capital | WION Expert Speak</a><h2>Investment in AI startups in India reveals a capital chasm</h2>Indian AI startups raised $643 million across 100 deals in 2025, up just 4.1 per cent, while AI funding in US startups surged 141 per cent to $121 billion across 765 rounds, according to Tracxn data reported by <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/27/india-startup-funding-hits-11b-in-2025-as-investors-grow-more-selective/">TechCrunch</a>. Indian capital largely favoured application-led firms over capital-intensive foundational model developers. Investors attribute this to India's lack of large foundational AI model companies and the time required to build research depth, talent pipelines and patient capital.However, there has been a sharp upturn in 2026. Indian AI startups raised <a href="https://www.analyticsinsight.net/amp/story/startups/how-indian-ai-startups-raised-394-billion-in-just-three-months">$3.94 billion</a> in the first quarter of this year alone, more than six times the full-year 2025 total. This was led by Neysa's $600 million funding round and the momentum generated by the AI Impact Summit hosted by India, according to Analytics Insight.New Delhi has reinforced this shift with a $1.15 billion Fund of Funds and a Rs 1 trillion ($12 billion) Research, Development and Innovation scheme spanning AI, quantum computing and deep-tech technologies, as reported by TechCrunch.Much of this remains at the policy announcement and reporting stage, so its long-term durability remains to be seen. However, it is fair to say that the direction has clearly reversed.Also read: <a href="https://www.wionews.com/india-news/india-s-ai-problem-gaps-in-compute-hardware-infrastructure-chips-1781943963441">India's AI problem: Gaps in compute, hardware, infrastructure, chips affect readiness</a><h2>Research output: China leads, India climbs slowly</h2>China dominates high-impact research, with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute's (<a href="https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/aspis-critical-technology-tracker-2025-updates-and-10-new-technologies/">ASPI</a>) Critical Technology Tracker, published in December 2025, showing China leading in 66 of 74 critical technologies like AI. India is slowly climbing up, having ranked 50th, up from 43rd a year earlier. India's weakness is concentrated in compute infrastructure and frontier AI model categories that matter most, rather than in the breadth of its research base.<a href="https://www.wionews.com/videos/how-india-is-positioning-itself-in-an-ai-world-wion-1771597788504/embed">https://www.wionews.com/videos/how-india-is-positioning-itself-in-an-ai-world-wion-1771597788504/embed</a><h2>Foundational AI: India's sovereign model bet</h2>India's foundational AI model push has been stuck in the planning stage for years, but is now moving towards <a href=" https://explainx.ai/blog/india-sovereign-ai-status-indiaai-mission-2026">execution</a>. <a href=" https://www.sarvam.ai/blogs/sarvam-30b-105b">Sarvam AI </a>was selected under the IndiaAI Mission in April 2025 to build the country's first sovereign large language model (LLM) ecosystem. Sarvam's original mandate was to build a 120-billion-parameter model. It <a href="https://www.opensourceforu.com/2026/03/sarvam-releases-30b-and-105b-llms-under-apache-2-0/">released</a> two open-source models in early 2026, Sarvam-30B and Sarvam-105B, under the Apache 2.0 licence on Hugging Face and AIKosh. Both are mixture-of-experts (MoE) reasoning models trained from scratch using government-supported compute infrastructure. A separate awardee, Soket AI, retains the original 120-billion-parameter model mandate.Also read: <a href="https://www.wionews.com/technology/forget-building-ai-india-is-yet-to-build-its-first-fully-indigenous-computer-or-mobile-phone-1781750813969">Forget building AI, India is yet to build its first fully indigenous computer or mobile phone</a> These should be viewed alongside the limitations. Sarvam's models were trained on a few thousand graphics processing units (GPUs) over several months, far below the cluster-months of more than 10,000 GPUs typically required for frontier-scale AI training. In addition, all sovereign model training continues to rely on imported NVIDIA chips, highlighting India's dependence on foreign semiconductor hardware. While India has now demonstrated that it can build and release competitive open-source AI models, closing the capability gap in frontier-scale AI systems remains the more difficult challenge.

India's AI progress has been constrained by low R&D spending and limited startup funding. The IndiaAI Mission and sovereign AI model efforts signal a significant shift in direction. Here is a status report

"Did India miss the AI bus?" This is a frequently asked question at recent artificial intelligence-related events in India. Clearly, the progress has been slow. But what is the reason? The answer may lie in how low, and slow, the investment has been in AI startups, foundational AI model development, and research and development (R&D). Here is a status report: India's research and development funding gap India's gross expenditure on research and development (GERD) is around 0.64 per cent of GDP. This is below the global average and far behind China, at around 2.6 per cent, and the US, at around 3.6 per cent, according to the Lowy Institute. Private industry funds only about 36 per cent of total R&D in India, compared with more than 70 per cent in the US, China and South Korea, according to a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace analysis. It also noted that India trails the two top AI leader nations in AI patents granted, reflecting not only a spending gap but also a quality gap. Also read: India's digital paradox: World-class talent, third-world capital | WION Expert Speak Investment in AI startups in India reveals a capital chasm Indian AI startups raised $643 million across 100 deals in 2025, up just 4.1 per cent, while AI funding in US startups surged 141 per cent to $121 billion across 765 rounds, according to Tracxn data reported by TechCrunch. Indian capital largely favoured application-led firms over capital-intensive foundational model developers. Investors attribute this to India's lack of large foundational AI model companies and the time required to build research depth, talent pipelines and patient capital. However, there has been a sharp upturn in 2026. Indian AI startups raised $3.94 billion in the first quarter of this year alone, more than six times the full-year 2025 total. This was led by Neysa's $600 million funding round and the momentum generated by the AI Impact Summit hosted by India, according to Analytics Insight. New Delhi has reinforced this shift with a $1.15 billion Fund of Funds and a Rs 1 trillion ($12 billion) Research, Development and Innovation scheme spanning AI, quantum computing and deep-tech technologies, as reported by TechCrunch. Much of this remains at the policy announcement and reporting stage, so its long-term durability remains to be seen. However, it is fair to say that the direction has clearly reversed. Also read: India's AI problem: Gaps in compute, hardware, infrastructure, chips affect readiness Research output: China leads, India climbs slowly China dominates high-impact research, with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute's (ASPI) Critical Technology Tracker, published in December 2025, showing China leading in 66 of 74 critical technologies like AI. India is slowly climbing up, having ranked 50th, up from 43rd a year earlier. India's weakness is concentrated in compute infrastructure and frontier AI model categories that matter most, rather than in the breadth of its research base. https://www.wionews.com/videos/how-india-is-positioning-itself-in-an-ai-world-wion-1771597788504/embed Foundational AI: India's sovereign model bet India's foundational AI model push has been stuck in the planning stage for years, but is now moving towards execution. Sarvam AI was selected under the IndiaAI Mission in April 2025 to build the country's first sovereign large language model (LLM) ecosystem. Sarvam's original mandate was to build a 120-billion-parameter model. It released two open-source models in early 2026, Sarvam-30B and Sarvam-105B, under the Apache 2.0 licence on Hugging Face and AIKosh. Both are mixture-of-experts (MoE) reasoning models trained from scratch using government-supported compute infrastructure. A separate awardee, Soket AI, retains the original 120-billion-parameter model mandate. Also read: Forget building AI, India is yet to build its first fully indigenous computer or mobile phone These should be viewed alongside the limitations. Sarvam's models were trained on a few thousand graphics processing units (GPUs) over several months, far below the cluster-months of more than 10,000 GPUs typically required for frontier-scale AI training. In addition, all sovereign model training continues to rely on imported NVIDIA chips, highlighting India's dependence on foreign semiconductor hardware. While India has now demonstrated that it can build and release competitive open-source AI models, closing the capability gap in frontier-scale AI systems remains the more difficult challenge.

India's AI progress has been constrained by low R&amp;D spending and limited startup funding. The IndiaAI Mission and sovereign AI model efforts signal a significant shift in direction. Here is a status report

India's AI problem: Funding gap for AI startups, research and development is the core constraint

Prime Minister Narendra Modi was seen wearing a sleek, spectacles-like device similar to a movie, at the the AI Impact Summit 2026. India is hosting the event at Delhi's Bharat Mandapam from February 16 to 20, welcoming leaders from across the nations. Major players from the technology industry, along with top policy makers, will also attend the five-day event focused on Artificial Intelligence.<h3>What is Sarvam Kaze?</h3>'Sarvam Kaze' is an indigenous AI-powered wearable glass that listens, understands, and captures what users see the world through their eyes in real time. The device supports more than 10 Indian languages, enabling voice-based interaction and potentially real-time translation.&nbsp;Sarvam AI, one of the 12 indigenous AI models being developed for India-specific applications, has introduced a wearable spectacles-like device that listens, understands, responds, and visually captures what the user sees. Users can also create customised experiences through the Sarvam platform. Named Sarvam Kaze, the device has been entirely designed and developed in India.&nbsp;Sarvam AI is building large language and speech models tailored for Indian languages, aimed at enabling voice-based interfaces, document processing, and citizen-centric services. The company said these innovations represent a major inflexion point for humanity.&nbsp;Among them were Sarvam Akshar, which delivers state-of-the-art accuracy enabling reliable digitisation of complex, real-world documents. Another innovation was Sarvam Studio, which helps creators go multilingual, one piece of content, across every corner of India. Saaras V3, a speech recognition model, was unveiled recently, among a host of others.&nbsp;Along with the wearable, Sarvam AI has launched 11 other AI platforms and solutions in recent weeks. The gadget includes Sarvam Akshar, which enables highly accurate digitisation of complex real-world documents. Other offerings also include Sarvam Studio, designed to help creators produce multilingual content easily across India, and Saaras V3, an advanced speech recognition model, among several other offerings.&nbsp;Also read: <a href="https://www.wionews.com/india-news/-big-economic-turmoil-ahead-anthropic-ceo-calls-for-smarter-ai-policies-in-india-1771314354785">‘Big economic turmoil ahead’: Anthropic CEO calls for smarter AI policies in India</a>

Sarvam AI is an indigenous AI model that is developed for India-specific applications. It has introduced a wearable spectacles-like device named ‘Sarvam Kaze’ that listens, understands, responds, and visually captures what the user sees.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi was seen wearing a sleek, spectacles-like device similar to a movie, at the the AI Impact Summit 2026. India is hosting the event at Delhi's Bharat Mandapam from February 16 to 20, welcoming leaders from across the nations. Major players from the technology industry, along with top policy makers, will also attend the five-day event focused on Artificial Intelligence. What is Sarvam Kaze? 'Sarvam Kaze' is an indigenous AI-powered wearable glass that listens, understands, and captures what users see the world through their eyes in real time. The device supports more than 10 Indian languages, enabling voice-based interaction and potentially real-time translation. Sarvam AI, one of the 12 indigenous AI models being developed for India-specific applications, has introduced a wearable spectacles-like device that listens, understands, responds, and visually captures what the user sees. Users can also create customised experiences through the Sarvam platform. Named Sarvam Kaze, the device has been entirely designed and developed in India. Sarvam AI is building large language and speech models tailored for Indian languages, aimed at enabling voice-based interfaces, document processing, and citizen-centric services. The company said these innovations represent a major inflexion point for humanity. Among them were Sarvam Akshar, which delivers state-of-the-art accuracy enabling reliable digitisation of complex, real-world documents. Another innovation was Sarvam Studio, which helps creators go multilingual, one piece of content, across every corner of India. Saaras V3, a speech recognition model, was unveiled recently, among a host of others. Along with the wearable, Sarvam AI has launched 11 other AI platforms and solutions in recent weeks. The gadget includes Sarvam Akshar, which enables highly accurate digitisation of complex real-world documents. Other offerings also include Sarvam Studio, designed to help creators produce multilingual content easily across India, and Saaras V3, an advanced speech recognition model, among several other offerings. Also read: ‘Big economic turmoil ahead’: Anthropic CEO calls for smarter AI policies in India

Sarvam AI is an indigenous AI model that is developed for India-specific applications. It has introduced a wearable spectacles-like device named ‘Sarvam Kaze’ that listens, understands, responds, and visually captures what the user sees.

What is Sarvam Kaze? India's first indigenous glasses PM Modi wore at AI Impact Summit 2026

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India's AI problem: Funding gap for AI startups, research and development is the core constraint

What is Sarvam Kaze? India's first indigenous glasses PM Modi wore at AI Summit