New Delhi, Sept. 18 -- BharatGen, a non-profit consortium incubated in IIT Bombay and formally launched 10 months ago, has become the highest-funded Indian AI entity with more than Rs.988 crore ($112 million) from the union government.

On Thursday, the ministry of electronics and information technology (Meity) announced the third tranche of investments under its $1.2-billion IndiaAI Mission, selecting eight startups and non-profit organisations to incentivise built-from-scratch large AI models, as well as datasets in multiple Indian languages.

Of the eight, BharatGen, was the largest recipient of the ministry's net outlay of around $170 million ( Rs.1,500 crore), having proposed to build AI models with up to one trillion data parameters...