Sarvam AI Unveils New Open-Source Models in Strategic Bet

Indian AI research lab Sarvam introduced a new generation of large language models on Tuesday, betting that smaller, efficient open-source AI can capture market share from the more expensive systems offered by its larger U.S. and Chinese competitors.

The launch, announced at the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, supports the government's initiative to reduce dependence on foreign AI platforms and develop models tailored to local languages and applications.

Sarvam stated the new lineup includes 30-billion and 105-billion parameter models; a text-to-speech model; a speech-to-text model; and a vision model for document parsing. This represents a significant upgrade from the company's 2-billion-parameter Sarvam 1 model released in October 2024.

The 30-billion and 105-billion parameter models utilize a mixture-of-experts architecture, which activates only a portion of their total parameters at once, dramatically lowering computing costs. The 30B model supports a 32,000-token context window for real-time conversation, while the larger model offers a 128,000-token window for complex, multi-step reasoning tasks.

Sarvam explained the new AI models were trained from the ground up, not fine-tuned on existing open-source systems. The 30B model was pre-trained on roughly 16 trillion text tokens, while the 105B model was trained on trillions of tokens across multiple Indian languages.

The models are engineered to power real-time applications, the startup added, including voice-based assistants and chat systems in Indian languages.

The startup noted the models were trained using computing resources from the government-backed IndiaAI Mission, with infrastructure support from data center operator Yotta and technical support from Nvidia.

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Sarvam executives said the company plans a measured approach to scaling its models, prioritizing real-world applications over sheer size.

"We want to be mindful in how we do the scaling," said Sarvam co-founder Pratyush Kumar at the launch. "We don't want to scale mindlessly. We aim to understand the tasks that truly matter at scale and build specifically for them."

Sarvam plans to open-source the 30B and 105B models, though it did not specify if the training data or full training code would also be released publicly.

The company also outlined plans to develop specialized AI systems, including coding-focused models and enterprise tools under a product called Sarvam for Work, plus a conversational AI agent platform named Samvaad.

Founded in 2023, Sarvam has raised over $50 million in funding from investors including Lightspeed Venture Partners, Khosla Ventures, and Peak XV Partners (formerly Sequoia Capital India).