BharatGen Launches 17B Parameter Sovereign AI Model, Bolstering India’s AI Capabilities

New Delhi – February 18, 2026 – BharatGen, India’s flagship sovereign AI initiative, today announced the launch of BharatGen Param2 17B MoE, a 17-billion-parameter multilingual Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) foundational model. This launch marks a significant step in India’s pursuit of self-reliance and technological leadership in artificial intelligence.

Building a Sovereign AI Ecosystem

BharatGen was established with the mission to develop India’s first sovereign AI – “by Bharat, for Bharat.” The initiative aims to create AI systems that deeply understand and reflect India’s diverse linguistic, cultural, and societal landscape. The new model is central to this mission, designed to ensure AI innovation is inclusive and accessible to all Indian citizens and enterprises. BharatGen is a collaborative effort by leading researchers and institutions across India.

Technical Specifications and Collaboration

The BharatGen Param2 17B MoE model leverages collaboration with NVIDIA, utilizing NVIDIA AI software and infrastructure. The finish-to-end training pipeline is built on NVIDIA AI Enterprise, incorporating NVIDIA NeMo open libraries, including NVIDIA NeMo-RL and Slurm workloads integrated with NVIDIA Base Command Manager, to ensure scalability and performance. Analytics Insight reports this collaboration is pivotal to the model’s development.

Applications Across Key Sectors

Optimized for multiple Indic languages, the model is designed to serve critical use cases across various sectors, including governance, education, healthcare, agriculture, and enterprise solutions. This is expected to accelerate digital transformation throughout the country. The initiative builds on the foundation laid by the launch of BharatGen in September 2024, which aimed to revolutionize public service delivery and citizen engagement through advancements in language, speech, and computer vision. INDIAai details the initial launch of the BharatGen initiative.

Open Access and Ecosystem Development

BharatGen is committed to fostering a robust and open ecosystem by releasing its models, documentation, and post-training workflows via its Hugging Face repository. This move empowers AI developers and enterprises to build, fine-tune, and deploy India-centric AI solutions. The India AI Impact Summit 2026, where the launch was announced, also featured participation from industry leaders like Kris Gopalakrishnan, Co-founder of Infosys, and Prof. Ganesh Ramakrishnan, Principal Investigator of BharatGen. Press Information Bureau highlights the participation of key figures at the summit.

Looking Ahead

According to Rishi Bal, CEO of BharatGen, the launch of PARAM 2 17B represents a “pivotal moment for India.” BharatGen’s ongoing efforts are expected to contribute significantly to the nation’s AI progress and establish India as a key player in the global AI landscape.