Sarvam can now host American AI models on its own infrastructure, says co-founder Pratyush Kumar
Last Updated: 2026-09-26 12:42:33
Sarvam’s AI infrastructure can now run models built by other companies, including American ones, alongside its own. Co-founder Pratyush Kumar shared the update on Saturday at the Moneycontrol Startup Conclave 2026. He was speaking in a session moderated by Moneycontrol Managing Editor Nalin Mehta.
“Now we can host our models, others’ models. We can now host American models on our infra,” Kumar said. He did not name the American models.
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Two quarters spent on infrastructure
The Bengaluru startup is best known for building foundation models. Kumar said its focus has now widened.
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“Most of the last two quarters, we have been thinking of running AI infrastructure,” he said.
That makes the infrastructure a product in its own right. Businesses can use Sarvam’s models or bring their own. According to Sarvam, deployments can run on private cloud, on-premise, hybrid or fully air-gapped systems.
Sarvam is also placing its engineers inside client teams. Under this “forward-deployed” approach, they help companies design AI agents, connect them to existing systems and improve how they run.
“Sarvam is deploying not just infra but also getting talent to build products,” Kumar said.
He was clear about who the company is building for. “Our success comes from the ability to build value for Indian enterprises,” he said.
Partners from hardware to banking
Sarvam has spent the past few months signing partners at different layers of the stack.
In August, it signed an agreement with the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), the government R&D body under MeitY. Under the deal, Sarvam’s models, infrastructure and applications will run on computing systems developed by C-DAC. The aim is an AI stack built in India, from hardware to application.
IBM announced a collaboration with Sarvam in July. It targets central and state governments, public sector bodies and regulated enterprises. HP has tied up with Sarvam to bring voice-first AI to its PCs in India. IDFC FIRST Bank joined the list in September.
Scale and funding
Sarvam said in July that its systems handle over two million voice conversations a day. They also process about 35 million digitised pages and roughly one crore API calls daily, across government and private deployments.
In June, the company raised $234 million in the first close of a planned $300 million Series B, at a post-money valuation of $1.5 billion. HCLTech led the round with $150 million. Sarvam has said the money will go towards computing capacity, its next generation of models and wider enterprise deployments.