India’s IT Ministry Hosts Deepseek on its Servers
India announced plans to host Chinese startup DeepSeek’s (深度求索) AI models on its servers to evaluate security and safety parameters, IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said in January 2025. Under the IndiaAI Mission, which has a budget of Rs 10,372 crore ($12.1 billion), the government is procuring 18,693 GPUs to provide “affordable compute” facilities for tech companies and AI researchers. Vaishnaw emphasized that this number was sufficient for India’s AI development needs, noting that DeepSeek was built with only about 2,000 GPUs. Dismissing concerns about India being late to AI development, he stressed that being a “trusted partner” ensured continued GPU supply from companies like Nvidia despite US restrictions against certain countries. Security testing of the models would be conducted by multiple agencies, including CERT-In (Indian Computer Emergency Response Team) and the National Cyber Security Secretariat.