Govt pauses fresh applications for foundational LLM after receiving 200+ proposals

IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw

Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has paused fresh submissions under its initiative to build indigenous foundation AI models under the Rs 10,738 crore IndiaAI Mission.

Under this initiative the government wants to build indigenous foundational AI models—such as large language models (LLMs), small language models (SLMs), and large multimodal models.

In an office memorandum, the government said that since opening applications for the submission of models in January, it has received more than 200 proposals.

They are currently being screened by an Expert and Approval Committee.

Earlier, Minister for Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw said that the government will soon be announcing the selected parties who will be working on the models further.

However, the government has extended the deadline for April’s round of submissions till April 22, 2025.

The Call for Proposals had initially invited rolling applications until a suitable number of projects were selected or for a period of six months—whichever came earlier.