In a Bloomberg interview, when Sam Altman was asked about China and Russia’s progress on AI and what they are doing, he said that it would be helpful if we knew – “ I would love to know more precisely where they are.” While those two countries might have been evading updates on their progress in the AI space, India may not have much to conceal. If you think about it, how involved are our Indian tycoons when it comes to investing in the AI space? 

Not My Cup of Tea

If you look at investments that were pumped into Indian startups offering AI-based products and services,the investments received till 2022 have been promising. According to Stanford University’s annual AI Index report, Indian AI startups received a total funding of $7.73 billion during 2013-2022, with $3.24 billion in 2022, making it the sixth-ranking country with the most AI investments. India is placed ahead of countries such as South Korea, France, and others. Interestingly, China came in at second position after the US. 

When it comes to future investments, India still stands as the most appealing investment hub of the next decade and even surpassing other emerging markets. However, the focus remains on banking, finance, renewable energy, electric vehicles and manufacturing to present a significant chance to generate returns.

While the picture has been quite different this year with generative AI making its way, and billion dollar investments pouring into AI companies, Indian investors seem to be missing in this ‘AI- action.’ If we look at our Indian favourites, none of them have shown any active interest. 

Billionaire industrialist Gautam Adani, may have expressed his interest for ChatGPT earlier this year, however, there has been no significant movement when it comes to AI investments. In January this year, Adani announced his plan to set up an AI lab in Tel Aviv and also said that the company will collaborate with AI labs in India and the US. In December last year, Adani Enterprises completed an acquisition of SIBIA Analytics and Consulting for INR 14.80 crore, which he said will help Adani Group enhance their AI and ML capabilities. Apart from these two developments, there has been none in the AI space from the investor. 

Similarly, billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s investments may largely be in telecom, energy, and retail, to name a few, and has not been too involved in the AI space. Last year, Reliance industries allocated a sum of $15 million to acquire a 25% ownership in Two Platforms, which specialises in deep-tech endeavours for building interactive and immersive AI encounters. However, this was at a time when generative AI madness had not begun.  

Others Racing Past

Considering how India was ahead of South Korea in last year’s annual AI Index report, the latter is now moving leaps and bounds in the AI space. From competing in the global AI chip race to heavily investing in AI companies, South Korea is racing through. Recently, SK Telecom invested $100M in Anthropic. Telecom giant KT Corp is also planning to invest $5.4 billion on AI by 2027. 

Furthermore, Sam Altman has also expressed interest in investing in Korean startups and has encouraged the country to lead in AI chip production. He even recommends Korea to direct its attention towards semiconductor chips which will be an integral feature for AI advancements. 

Abu Dhabi has also stepped up in the open source model race with Falcon. Developed by the Technology Innovation Institute (TII) in Abu Dhabi, UAE, Falcon came in three iterations – 1B, 7B, and 40B. It is said to demonstrate superior performance when compared to LLaMA.

Will Not Give Up

Even if reality paints a different picture, the ambitions are uncapped. MD and CEO of Tech Mahindra, CP Gurnani was quick to take personal offence to Sam Altman’s statement which was taken out of context during his India visit. While he declared “challenge accepted”, without understanding the context of building LLMs with $10 million, the talent pool in India is not utilised itself. Furthermore, there’s not a single Indian investor who has gone big on AI investments. 

While our investors may not be betting big on outside technologies, there has been significant progress happening within the country. There have been developments in Indic language model where AI4Bharat, an initiative of IIT Madras, is focussed on building open-source language AI for Indian languages including datasets, models and applications. Backed by Nandan Nilekani, AI4Bharat is working towards making these foundational models across tasks and 22 Indian languages. 

You even have companies such as Karya that have partnered with rural India to create datasets for training LLMs for Microsoft, Google and other Indian players. 

While India is ambitious in creating and supporting LLMs through datasets or implementing generative AI in their organisations, Indian investors take a step back when it comes to pouring money in AI companies that are aggressively working in the space.