Bidders to integrate services with AI Compute portal by April 14

The pre-bid meeting for the second round of the GPU tender under the IndiaAI Mission took place on March 26, 2025. This meeting was well-attended, indicating strong interest from various companies. The mission aims to assign artificial intelligence (AI) workloads to the lowest price (L1) bidders, which include Reliance Jio, E2E Networks, NxtGen, Locuz, and CtrlS. These companies are expected to integrate their services with the AI Compute portal by April 14, 2025.

The tender process is part of a broader initiative to procure 10,000 GPUs to enhance India’s AI capabilities. The response to the tender has been significant, with ten technically qualified bidders offering a total of 14,517 GPUs at competitive rates. Notably, the current L1 bidders do not provide Nvidia’s B200 GPUs, but there is anticipation that new entrants may offer these models in future rounds.

The continuous empanelment process allows new firms to apply and potentially match or beat existing rates, fostering competition and expanding the AI computing capacity in India. The application submission deadline for this ongoing process is April 30, 2025, with evaluations scheduled for May.

CT Bureau