Ola unveils India’s first AI chip

Ola Cabs, which branched out from ride-hailing platform into electric scooter manufacturing Ola Electric and artificial intelligence modelling with Kritrum, has now entered the semiconductor business with the first locally manufactured AI computer chip, Ola Silicon.

The development follows Ola’s demonstration of its AI cloud platform Krutrim and Google Maps alternative Ola Maps.

The company unveiled its plans to develop a family of AI chips with the development of innovative silicon chip offerings. 

These chips, according to Ola Electric, are designed to be cost-effective and customized to meet local needs, the company stated.

Ola is on a mission mode designing and developing end-to-end silicon stack from the best-in-class chips to

data centers optimized for performance and energy efficiency

The first set of made-in-India chips - Bodhi 1, Ojas, and Sarv 1 - are slated for launch in 2026.

Bodhi 1 is designed for AI inferencing, especially for use in large language models (LLMs) and applications requiring high-performance vision processing. Its is also power efficient, as Ola claims.

Ojas, which is designed to meet the increasing need for edge AI solutions, can be adapted for various applications such as automotive, mobile, and IoT. Ola will be integrating Ojas into its future electric vehicles, for managing features like charging optimization and driver assistance systems (ADAS).

Sarv 1, a general-purpose server CPU based on the Arm instruction set, is designed to meet AI computing needs of data centers.

While Ola’s prototype chips may not compare with the likes of ASML and Nvidia GPUs, the development is critical in India’s march towards a fully develope3d AI computing ecosystem.

While the global AI computing challenge, currently led by the US and China, India, with its vast pool of tech talent, has the necessary resources to pursue its AI ambitions.

Meanwhile, Ola has introduced 50 new services, including infrastructure services like virtual machines, cloud storage, data protection security measures, and observability features for accurate data monitoring, on Krutrim AI Cloud, which can be accessed freely till Diwali.