23 Jul 2026
Indian companies look to Chinese LLMs as AI costs bite
13 Jul 2026
13 Jul 2026
This is a link-enhanced version of an article that first appeared in Nikkei Asia.
Article Overview:
The article explores how Indian companies are increasingly adopting Chinese large language models (LLMs) to manage rising AI costs, while raising important questions around AI sovereignty, cybersecurity and India’s dependence on foreign AI infrastructure. It examines the commercial drivers behind the growing adoption of open-weight models and the broader implications for AI governance, data security and the development of India’s domestic AI ecosystem.
Our Partner, Nikhil Narendran, shared his perspective. Here’s what he had to say:
“Startups and developers are emerging as the early adopters of Chinese LLMs in India, while larger enterprises are also actively evaluating their deployment.”
“The token bills are a serious issue – it is increasingly becoming unsustainable.”
“By virtue of being locally hosted, data stays in India, although there might be unverified deployment artifacts such as malware or trojans, which is a concern.”
“Unless the token-intensive nature of the U.S. frontier AI models changes, the Chinese are likely to take a significant lead over the Americans. Since it’s mainly the trust factor that goes against them, I am sure Chinese developers understand that risk, and hence are likely to be extra careful.”
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