Chinese artificial intelligence platform DeepSeek will be hosted on Indian servers to address privacy concerns regarding cross-border data transfer, Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Thursday.
DeepSeek, founded by quant fund leader Liang Wenfeng, has shifted the global AI landscape and had triggered a selloff in tech stocks across the world.
India has been guarded on cross-border data transfers and has issued rules to localise storage. China, in particular, has been a major concern.
An estimated $30 billion will be invested in India for hyperscalers and data centres in the next two-three years, the minister said.
During a press briefing, Vaishnaw highlighted the progress of the IndiaAI Mission, which has already far surpassed its initial GPU targets. With 18,693 GPUs now available, the initiative aims to provide resources to researchers, startups, and businesses across the country. Notably, 15,000 high-end GPUs have been procured, including 1,480 H200 GPUs.
For context, models like DeepSeek and ChatGPT were trained using 2,000 and 25,000 GPUs, respectively.
Roughly 10,000 GPUs are now available for use starting today, said Vaishnaw, adding that a common compute facility for researchers will be operational within two days. This facility will serve as a vital resource for various AI projects in India.
Data Protection Rules
The new draft rules under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 issues earlier this month indicated that the government may publish a list of countries or regions to which personal data cannot be transferred.
While Kalindhi Bhatia, partner at BTG Advaya, said the draft rules do not restrict the cross-border transfer of data, Akshaya Suresh, partner at JSA Advocates & Solicitors, said they seem to provide a broader restriction on transfer of data outside India.
Keeping DeepSeek Data Within India | Watch Ashwini Vaishnaw's Remark
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