Ola Electric, one of India’s top electric two-wheeler makers, has unveiled plans to launch India’s first AI chips. The company announced that three chips will be introduced in 2026, followed by a fourth in 2028.
Ola founder Bhavish Aggarwal made the announcement during the company’s ‘Sankalp 2024’ event in Bengaluru. This marks a significant milestone for India’s tech industry, showcasing homegrown innovation in the AI space.
Ola Electric To Make India’s First AI Chips
““India has a unique opportunity to become a global superpower in technologies of the future such as AI. India being the source for 20 per cent of the world’s data and home to one of the largest tech talent pools, is fully equipped to lead the AI wave. […….] Our goal is to push the boundaries of AI chip performance by 2028. This is a bold and ambitious project, but we are committed to delivering our first AI chip for India by 2026,” Aggarwal stated during his keynote.
The first three AI chips—Bodhi 1, Ojas, and Sarv 1—are designed for diverse applications. Bodhi 1 is optimized for AI inferencing, making it suitable for tasks like large language models (LLMs) and visual models. Ola also claims that Bodhi 1 excels in power efficiency, a critical aspect of AI processing today.
The Ojas chip is tailored for specific uses such as automotive, mobile, and IoT applications and will be integrated into Ola’s next-gen electric vehicles to manage functions like charging and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). Lastly, the Sarv 1 chip, which uses an Arm architecture, is geared toward data centers.
The company’s presentation suggested that their prototype chips deliver superior performance and power efficiency compared to Nvidia GPUs. However, details were sparse regarding the exact GPU models used for comparison.
Other Announcements
In addition to its AI chip plans, Ola founder Bhavish Aggarwal made several key announcements during the ‘Sankalp 2024’ event in Bengaluru on August 15. Aggarwal introduced Krutrim, an AI startup he founded, which is now integrated into Ola Electric and Ola Consumer (formerly Ola Cabs).
He also unveiled plans for a 1-gigawatt data center by 2028, significantly expanding from the current 20-megawatt capacity. The expanded data center will support the company’s growing AI ambitions.
Krutrim’s AI-powered virtual assistant is set to be embedded in Ola Electric scooters as part of the MoveOS5 system, which will be available in beta around Diwali this year.
“The data centre will be a computing and data storage powerhouse, enabling Krutrim to offer world-class AI services to India and the world,” the startup said in a statement.
These developments reflect Ola’s commitment to blending AI and advanced technology into its products and services.
Photo credit – Ola Sankalp 2024 Youtube