IndiaAI Mission selects 10 firms to bid for 10,000 GPU mega tender

The IndiaAI Mission was approved by the Union Cabinet in March 2024

Ten firms, including Jio Platforms and Tata Communications, have been selected for the final bidding process to procure 10,000 GPUs under the IndiaAI Mission, sources have told Moneycontrol.

The bidding for the graphics processing unit (GPU) procurement begins January 22 and results are expected in a week, the sources said. GPUs are vital for AI as they can handle many tasks at once, making them much faster than regular computer processors. The speed is crucial for training and running AI models, which need to process large amounts of data quickly.

As much as 44 percent, or Rs 4,563.36 crore, of the Rs 10,371.92 crore of the IndiaAI Mission has been earmarked for providing compute capacity of more than 10,000 GPUs over five years.

The other eight firms which will bid for the tender are CMS Computers India Pvt Ltd, Ctrls Datacenters Ltd, E2E Networks Limited, Locuz Enterprise Solutions Ltd, Orient Technologies Ltd, NxtGen Datacenter and Cloud Technologies Private Ltd, Vensysco Technologies Limited and Yotta Data Services Limited.

The decision comes a week after the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology met 13 companies individually for a technical presentation. CloudThat Technologies, Hostin Services and I2k2 Networks did not pass the technical evaluation.

Nineteen companies were originally in the fray, of which 13 were selected for technical review.

The IndiaAI mission was approved in March 2024 to create computing infrastructure in the country.

On August 16, the IT ministry invited applications to procure GPUs to provide access to AI services over cloud to academia, MSMEs, startups, governments, and other public sector agencies.

The tender was modified after several members of the industry said its provisions were restrictive for smaller players to participate.

The average turnover requirement for primary bidders was lowered from Rs 100 crore to Rs 50 crore. For non-primary consortium members, the requirement was halved to Rs 25 crore, the September 27 documents show.

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