Aravind Srinivas, Founder and CEO of Perplexity AI, feels that India must “show the world that it’s capable of ISRO-like feat for AI” instead of focusing on building use cases for AI on top of the large language models (LLM).
In a post on X (formally Twitter), Srinivas wrote, “I am ready to invest a $1mn personally and 5 hours/week of my time into the most qualified group of people that can do this right now for making India great again in the context of AI. Consider this as a commitment that cannot be backtracked. The team has to be cracked and obsessed like DeepSeek team and has to open source the models with MIT license.”
His suggestion was hailed by netizens with some saying "this is the most patriotic thing an Indian did for India."
Earlier, the Perplexity AI CEO disagreed with Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani’s view on AI and training models and highlighted that model training skills and building on top of existing models are essential for Indians to learn and for the nation's artificial intelligence to gain from the benefits.
In an earlier post, Srinivas wrote, “Re India training its foundation models debate: I feel like India fell into the same trap I did while running Perplexity. Thinking models are going to cost a shit ton of money to train. But India must show the world that it's capable of ISRO-like feet for AI.”
Elon Musk appreciated ISRO (not even Blue Origin) because he respects when people can get stuff done by not spending a lot. That’s how he operates, he added. “I think that’s possible for AI, given the recent achievements of DeepSeek. So, I hope India changes its stance from wanting to reuse models from open-source and instead trying to build muscle to train their models that are not just good for Indic languages but are globally competitive on all benchmarks.”
Srinivas also said that he is not in a position to run a DeepSeek-like company for India, but is happy to help anyone obsessed enough to do it and open-source the models.
Srinivas’s response comes after Nandan Nilekani, in October 2024, advised Indian AI startups to stay away from building large language models (LLMs) and move towards practical AI applications instead.
Reflecting on the state of AI in India, Roshni Nadar Malhotra, Chairperson of HCLTech, also observed that while Indian companies are focusing on practical AI use cases, they aren't yet at the cutting edge of AI research. She said that for India to lead in AI, investment in academic institutions is vital. Cutting-edge AI solutions typically emerge from top universities, which then drive commercial innovation.
Roshni shared insights on AI’s transformative role within Indian tech companies during an exclusive conversation with Rahul Kanwal, Executive Director of Business Today, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.