New Delhi, June 26 -- India must build the foundational models underpinning the artificial intelligence (AI) age or risk becoming merely a consumer of the disruptive technology, according to the country's only not-for-profit AI entity, which is also the largest benefactor of the government's $1.2-billion AI mission.

BharatGen, a consortium of AI labs across nine institutes, was set up by Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay in December 2024 as a non-profit, and received a Rs.1,058.82 crore grant under the Centre's AI mission on 18 September 2025. The entity is developing one of India's first sovereign large language models (LLMs)-foundational AI systems that mimic human writing and speech by analyzing vast amounts of data.

"We ca...