G42, a leading AI-based firm in Abu Dhabi, UAE, has announced the upcoming launch of NANDA, a Hindi Large Language Model (LLM), designed predominantly for Hindi speakers in India.
The announcement was made in the presence of His Highness Sheikh Khaled bin Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi during the UAE-India Business Forum in Mumbai on September 10, 2024.
NANDA was named after Nanda Devi, second-highest mountain in India, after Kangchenjunga. The program is a 13-billion parameter model trained on approximately 2.13 trillion tokens of language datasets, including Hindi, English and Hinglish.
The project is a collaboration between Inception (a G42 company), Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (the world’s first graduate research university dedicated to AI) and Cerebras (an American artificial intelligence company based in Sunnyvale, California, with an office in Bangalore).
Manu Jain, the CEO of G42 India, has said that India has solidified its position as a “global technology leader”, with many initiatives like ‘Digital India’ and ‘Startup India’ emerging under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership.
As the country stands on the brink of AI-powered growth, G42 is proud to contribute to this journey with the launch of NANDA in support of India's AI ambitions,” says Jain.
Dr Andrew Jackson, Acting CEO of Inception, says that, “G42 has a strong track record in the development of language and domain-specific LLMs. With NANDA, we are heralding a new era of AI inclusivity, ensuring that the rich heritage and depth of Hindi language is represented in the digital and AI landscape. NANDA exemplifies G42’s unwavering commitment to excellence and fostering equitable AI.”
Earlier this year, leading software company Microsoft, invested $1.5 billion in G42, hoping to advance AI’s capabilities and broaden its reach.
This is not the first time that G42 has created a language model AI. Back in 2023, they launched an Arabic LLM called ‘JAIS’, the first of its kind.
“JAIS set a new standard for linguistic AI which G42 now seeks to replicate for other regions whose languages are still underrepresented,” the company said.
Building on the success of JAIS, the release of NANDA hopes to empower India’s scientific, academic, and developer communities while at the same time growing the Hindi language AI ecosystem.