India’s ambitious artificial intelligence programme has entered a landmark phase with the announcement of eight organisations chosen to develop foundational large language models (LLMs). The declaration was made by IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw during the AI Impact Summit 2026, held in New Delhi on September 18.

The highlight of this round is the responsibility given to the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, which will lead a consortium named BharatGen. The group has been tasked with creating a trillion-parameter LLM—a scale that ranks among the largest AI projects in the world. To support this effort, the government has approved a financial grant of ₹988.6 crore under the IndiaAI Mission.

In AI research, parameters refer to the internal variables learned by a model to detect patterns and relationships in data. Generally, a higher number of parameters translates into deeper comprehension of complex language structures. For India, reaching the trillion-parameter milestone is considered a decisive step toward developing indigenous AI that can stand shoulder to shoulder with global giants.

The full list of selected entities includes Avataar AI, IIT Bombay Consortium – BharatGen, Fractal Analytics Limited, Tech Mahindra Ltd, Zeinteiq Aitech Innovations, Genloop Intelligence Pvt Ltd, NeuroDX (Intellihealth), and Shodh AI. Each will focus on building foundational LLMs targeting specific domains and applications.

Tech Mahindra, which has already been working on its Indic-language focused Project Indus, expressed pride at being included in the mission. In an official statement, the company noted:

“We are proud to be recognised as part of the IndiaAI Mission. This announcement comes on the back of building our own and India’s own Indic LLM, Project Indus. Built completely in-house and at frugal cost, the journey of having Project Indus as open source to creating sovereign LLMs has been a learning and rewarding experience.”

This development builds on earlier stages of the IndiaAI Mission. Back in May 2025, three startups—SoketAI, Gnani.ai, and Gan AI—were chosen to develop India’s first home-grown foundational models. In April 2025, four other startups, including Sarvam AI, were selected to build specialised AI systems. To ensure adequate resources, the government has worked with cloud and infrastructure providers to expand access to GPUs, which are crucial for training large-scale AI models.

Minister Vaishnaw emphasised that the initial batch of projects is showing encouraging progress.

“The models that were selected earlier are progressing really well and I am confident that by the time the AI Impact Summit gets underway in February 2026, India will have a model or models ready,” he said.

Looking ahead, the government is preparing to unveil a comprehensive AI framework. This policy document, being drafted jointly by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and the Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser, is expected to set guidelines for the responsible creation and deployment of AI systems across the country.

With these developments, India is positioning itself as a significant force in the global AI landscape, aiming not just to participate but to lead in the development of cutting-edge language models.