Moneycontrol PRO
HomeNewsBusinessStartupZoho to take on OpenAI, Google with new AI model, Sridhar Vembu overseeing project

Zoho to take on OpenAI, Google with new AI model, Sridhar Vembu overseeing project

The project is being overseen by founder and CEO Sridhar Vembu, and is being worked on by the company's R&D team in India.

June 14, 2023 / 14:18 IST
Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu

Indian software-as-a-service (SaaS) major Zoho is building its own large language model (LLM), similar to OpenAI's GPT and Google's PaLM 2 models. The project is being overseen by founder and CEO Sridhar Vembu, and is being worked on by the company's R&D team in India.

"We have been working on artificial intelligence for a decade now. When customers needed ChatGPT integration, we gave them that by integration with 13 of our apps as we announced recently," Praval Singh, vice president of marketing and customer experience, Zoho said in Delhi on June 14.

Also Read: What powers ChatGPT and Bard? A look at LLMs or large language models

"In the short term, we have built the integration with ChatGPT... But we are also building proprietary large language models that will be capable of summarising, paraphrasing and adapting to new tasks. However, we have not set a specific timeline for it," he added.

Zoho's announcement of building LLMs comes days after a controversy was stirred up around a comment made by OpenAI founder and CEO Sam Altman. He said that it would be "hopeless" for an Indian startup with $10 million in funding to work on a foundational LLM.

Altman later clarified that his quote had been taken out of context, but not before Tech Mahindra CEO CP Gurnani declared that he took OpenAI chief's remark as a "challenge."

Meanwhile, Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar has said that OpenAI chief Sam Altman is not the final word on India's AI aspirations, and that there will be many areas where he disagrees with the founder of the immensely popular ChatGPT chatbot.

Invite your friends and family to sign up for MC Tech 3, our daily newsletter that breaks down the biggest tech and startup stories of the day

Deepsekhar Choudhury
Deepsekhar Choudhury Deepsekhar covers tech and startups at Moneycontrol. Tweets at @deepsekharc
first published: Jun 14, 2023 01:08 pm

Discover the latest Business News, Sensex, and Nifty updates. Obtain Personal Finance insights, tax queries, and expert opinions on Moneycontrol or download the Moneycontrol App to stay updated!

Subscribe to Tech Newsletters

  • On Saturdays

    Find the best of Al News in one place, specially curated for you every weekend.

  • Daily-Weekdays

    Stay on top of the latest tech trends and biggest startup news.

Advisory Alert: It has come to our attention that certain individuals are representing themselves as affiliates of Moneycontrol and soliciting funds on the false promise of assured returns on their investments. We wish to reiterate that Moneycontrol does not solicit funds from investors and neither does it promise any assured returns. In case you are approached by anyone making such claims, please write to us at grievanceofficer@nw18.com or call on 02268882347