State Equity In AI Companies

In August, Sam Altman floated the idea of handing the US government about five per cent of OpenAI, dressed up as a sovereign wealth fund for ordinary Americans. Around the same time, and with far less noise, the Indian government moved towards taking a one to two per cent share in Sarvam, the Bengaluru startup building foundation models, in exchange for a compute subsidy under the IndiaAI mission. While the sums are small, what these arrangements set up needs to be analysed for its unintended consequences.

MeitY writes the rules for AI in India. It also runs the mission that decides who gets subsidised GPUs. Government departments will buy some of what these companies build. And now the same ministry will also get a place at the table.

Join Arindam Goswami and Bharath Reddy as we discuss all of this. Bharath has been following this, and he has argued that India should hold back even as Washington, Beijing and others reach for equity. In this episode, we work through why, and where the argument runs into trouble.

You can read Bharath's oped on this topic here: https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/indian-government-invest-ai-openai-sarvam-sam-altman-10810106/

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