IBM, Sarvam to Build Sovereign AI Stack for Governments, Regulated Sectors in India

IBM and Sarvam are collaborating to develop and deploy sovereign AI technologies for government organisations, public sector entities, and regulated enterprises in India.

The companies will combine IBM’s Sovereign Core software with Sarvam’s sovereign AI stack, which includes reasoning models, language models, and voice AI trained in India. The partnership will focus on piloting AI solutions for use cases such as citizen services, grievance redressal, document processing, and administrative workflows.

As part of the collaboration, the companies will also work on solution accelerators, technical advisory programmes, and knowledge-sharing initiatives to help organisations move AI deployments from pilot projects to production.

The IBM GovTech AI Innovation Centre in Lucknow will serve as a joint incubation and demonstration hub where government departments, public sector organisations and enterprises can evaluate sovereign AI deployments and address technical, operational, and governance requirements.

IBM said its Sovereign Core platform is designed to give organisations control over data, operations, and governance while meeting security and compliance requirements. Sarvam will provide its AI models and language technologies on top of the platform.

“Sovereign AI is not simply about where AI runs. It is about giving organisations control over how AI is governed, deployed, and operated,” said Sriram Raghavan, General Manager, IBM Software, India and Software Innovation Lab, in a statement.

He added that IBM Sovereign Core provides “an open, enterprise-grade platform and middleware foundation” to help governments and regulated enterprises deploy AI in environments they control. “By combining these capabilities with Sarvam's India-first AI technologies, we aim to help organisations operationalise sovereign AI and accelerate the journey from experimentation to production-scale outcomes,” he noted.

Pratyush Kumar, Co-founder of Sarvam, said sovereign AI must integrate with existing government and enterprise systems.

“Sovereign AI has to run inside the systems governments and enterprises already depend on, and at the scale at which those systems operate,” Kumar said.

“IBM's Sovereign Core gives governments an AI-ready technology foundation they control. Our stack puts models, voice, and language technologies on top of it, so a citizen can access a benefit or resolve a grievance in their own language, on a phone call,” he added.