'Don't confuse access with ownership': Sarvam CEO on what Anthropic's Fable ban means for India

Pratyush Kumar, CEO and co-founder of Sarvam, addressed the recent suspension of Anthropic's Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models, emphasizing the importance of distinguishing access from ownership in the realm of artificial intelligence. He argued that this incident underscores the necessity for India to pursue 'sovereign AI', a concept he believes is vital for the country’s technological independence. Kumar remarked that the ban serves as a crucial reminder that access to advanced technology does not equate to ownership or control. 'The Fable ban is a catalyst for greater awareness about the need for sovereignty in AI,' he stated. Sarvam is actively working to realize the vision of becoming India's first consequential AI company. The ban was enacted by the U.S. government, which mandated Anthropic to restrict access to its models for all foreign nationals, including its own employees from abroad. Anthropic confirmed that this directive forced them to immediately disable the Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for compliance, although access to their Claude models remains unaffected. Kumar noted the broader implications of this situation, suggesting that users, companies, and nations must recognize the vulnerabilities that come with relying on externally controlled technology. He indicated that the landscape of AI talent is shifting to align with national interests, predicting increased restrictions on advanced AI systems even as general-purpose AI becomes more accessible. Highlighting Sarvam's commitment to creating sovereign AI solutions, Kumar mentioned the company’s advancements in computing infrastructure and model development. Sarvam claims to be the first team in India to train large-scale sovereign AI models, utilizing approximately 3,400 H100 GPUs. The company is also making strides in launching India's first Blackwell cluster and aims to achieve significant AI compute capacity by 2027. Kumar introduced 'Sarvam 105B', which he described as India's pioneering sovereign model developed from scratch, with plans to expand towards trillion-parameter systems. Additionally, he announced an upcoming coding-focused model and reported a threefold increase in the usage of Sarvam’s hosted models over the past three months. Sarvam is also preparing to launch a robust inference platform tailored for banks, governments, and enterprises, while its voice AI products are facilitating millions of interactions daily. The company is venturing into enterprise AI agents and creating customizable platforms for organizations. Kumar concluded with an optimistic outlook on India's potential in the AI sector, citing the nation’s talent pool, economic scale, and governmental support for technological innovation. 'India is poised for greatness in AI, and we are hiring!' he affirmed.