IBM, Sarvam partner to build sovereign AI solutions for Indian government, regulated sectors

IBM and homegrown AI startup Sarvam have entered into a partnership to develop and test sovereign AI solutions for government departments, public sector organisations and regulated enterprises in India.

Under the partnership, IBM Sovereign Core will provide the underlying software and middleware needed to deploy and govern AI systems, while Sarvam will add its reasoning models and multilingual voice and language technologies. The partnership will initially target areas such as citizen services, grievance redressal, document processing and administrative workflows.

The partnership comes as governments and companies in regulated sectors increasingly explore sovereign AI systems that allow them to retain control over data, infrastructure and model governance.


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The IBM GovTech AI Innovation Center in Lucknow will act as an incubation and demonstration hub for government departments and enterprises to test applications and assess the technical, operational and governance requirements.

“IBM Sovereign Core provides an open, enterprise-grade platform and middleware foundation designed to help governments and regulated enterprises scale AI within environments they trust while addressing governance, security, and compliance requirements. By combining these capabilities with Sarvam’s India-first AI technologies, we aim to help organizations operationalize sovereign AI and accelerate the journey from experimentation to production-scale outcomes,” said Sriram Raghavan, General Manager, IBM Software, India and Software Innovation Lab.

Sarvam said its technology would allow government services to be offered through Indian languages and voice-based interfaces, including over phone calls.

“Sovereign AI has to run inside the systems governments and enterprises already depend on, and at the scale at which those systems operate,” said Pratyush Kumar, Co-Founder, Sarvam.

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“IBM’s Sovereign Core gives governments an AI-ready technology foundation they control. Our stack puts models, voice, and language technologies on top of it, so a citizen can access a benefit or resolve a grievance in their own language, on a phone call,” Kumar added.

Earlier this month, HCLTech partnered with Sarvam and the government of Odisha to set-up its first AI data centre in the state with an investment of Rs 14,257 crore. In June, HCLTech announced its investment plans of $150 million as the lead strategic investor in Sarvam’s latest Series B funding round of $234 million.