Sarvam AI Unveils Trillion-Parameter Model

Sarvam AI, a Bengaluru-based company, has announced plans to build a trillion-plus parameter foundation model entirely from scratch in India. This move positions the company to compete directly with frontier systems from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic, while undercutting them sharply on price.

The announcement was made at Epoch 2026, Sarvam's first developer conference held in Bengaluru, where the company unveiled its biggest product roadmap to date. Cofounder Pratyush Kumar told the audience at the event that the company was building the trillion-plus parameter model right in India, adding that it was being trained from scratch to be competitive in coding, cybersecurity, simulation, and scientific research.

The model is expected to arrive within six months, according to the company. Alongside the announcement of the upcoming frontier model, Sarvam also revealed new pricing for its existing Sarvam 105B model. The upgraded model will now cost $0.80 per million blended tokens, which the company said makes it roughly five and a half times cheaper than OpenAI's GPT-5.4 Mini, priced at $4.50, and more than eleven times cheaper than Google's Gemini 3.5 Flash, priced at 9 dollars per million tokens.

Sarvam also used the event to showcase upgrades to its voice technology stack. Bulbul V4, its text to speech model, drew attention during live demos for its ability to produce natural, cinematic sounding speech complete with emotional cues like laughter, excitement, and emphasis, moving away from the flat, robotic tone typical of older systems.

Its speech to text counterpart, Saras V4, was also unveiled with multi-speaker support, allowing it to separate and transcribe overlapping conversations, a feature aimed squarely at making meeting recordings and call transcriptions more usable in real-world settings.

Beyond the models themselves, Sarvam announced the launch of an India-hosted inference service, allowing developers to run leading AI models on domestic servers rather than relying on infrastructure based overseas. Cofounder Vivek Raghavan described the move as part of the company's broader push toward what he called token sovereignty, referring to serving a larger share of the AI computing needs generated within India through local infrastructure.

The company also announced the opening of a new office in San Francisco as it looks to expand its global footprint, and confirmed the appointment of Devendra Singh Chaplot, previously associated with Mistral, as an advisor to help guide its frontier model development.

The announcements come at a moment of heightened interest in AI development in India, with several companies and research institutions working on building cutting-edge AI models. Sarvam's move to build a trillion-plus parameter model entirely from scratch in India is seen as a significant step forward in this direction.

The company's focus on building the full stack in India, including the launch of an India-hosted inference service, is also expected to have a positive impact on the country's AI ecosystem. By providing developers with access to leading AI models on domestic servers, Sarvam is helping to reduce dependence on overseas infrastructure and promote token sovereignty.

Overall, Sarvam's announcements are seen as a significant development in the field of AI in India, and are expected to have a major impact on the country's AI ecosystem in the coming months and years.

In terms of significance, Sarvam's move to build a trillion-plus parameter model entirely from scratch in India is a major step forward for the country's AI ecosystem. It demonstrates the company's commitment to building cutting-edge AI models in India, and is expected to have a positive impact on the country's AI industry as a whole.

The company's focus on token sovereignty is also expected to have a major impact on the country's AI ecosystem. By providing developers with access to leading AI models on domestic servers, Sarvam is helping to reduce dependence on overseas infrastructure and promote the development of AI models in India.

In conclusion, Sarvam's announcements are a significant development in the field of AI in India, and are expected to have a major impact on the country's AI ecosystem in the coming months and years. The company's commitment to building cutting-edge AI models in India, and its focus on token sovereignty, are expected to promote the development of AI models in the country and reduce dependence on overseas infrastructure.