Vivek Raghavan warns India risks 'digital colony' from foreign AI
Vivek Raghavan, co-founder of Sarvam AI, is sounding the alarm about India leaning too much on foreign AI.
He says this could turn the country into a "digital colony," where outside tech giants call the shots.
Raghavan urges India to build its own AI tools and calls out global companies for giving away advanced models for free, which he sees as undercutting local innovation.
Sarvam AI builds multilingual homegrown AI
Sarvam AI is building homegrown tech that actually works across India's many languages.
Right now, their voice agents handle approximately 2.5 million to 3 million calls daily; the company's end-to-end voice system supports 12 Indian languages, while some of its models support up to 22.
In June, the company announced that it had raised $234 million in the first close of its $300 million Series B funding round, with HCLTech leading, and plans to launch an even bigger 1-trillion-parameter model soon.
They're also looking to take their affordable tech beyond India, with eyes on Africa, the Middle East, and Asia next.