Ola Electric announces India’s first AI chip — Bodhi 1, Ojas, and Sarv 1 slated for 2026 and Bodhi 2 for 2028
August 18, 2024
(Image credit: Ola Electric / YouTube)
Ola Electric, one of India’s biggest electric two-wheeled vehicle manufacturers, just announced the launch of its AI chips. Three chips are expected to arrive in 2026, with another one slated for 2028. These will be the first AI chips to come out of India, and there’s demand for these within the country. India-based Yotta, a data center and server company, ordered 16,000 Nvidia GPUs slated for next year, with a further 16,000 already delivered last mont.
Ola’s first three chips are Bodhi 1, Ojas, and Sarv 1. The fourth is Bodhi 2, the successor to the first Indian AI chip. Bodhi 1 is designed for AI inferencing, making it suitable for LLMs and visual models. Ola also claims that Bodhi 1 delivers best-in-class power efficiency, one of the biggest challenges facing AI processing today.
Aside from that, there’s also the Ojas Edge AI chip, which is designed for specific applications. The company can customize this chip for various applications, including automotive, mobile, IoT, and more. Ola also plans to deploy this chip in its next-generation electric vehicles to help run systems like charging, ADAS, and more. Of course, with the massive demand in AI computing, the company also introduced the Sarv 1, which uses an Arm instruction set built for data centers.
The company’s presentation shows its prototype chips deliver better performance and power efficiency than Nvidia GPUs. However, we don’t have any information on what GPU they were comparing it against, whether it’s an RTX 4090 or a H200, only that it was running at 200 watts. Furthermore, the company didn’t indicate where these chips are being fabricated.
It looks like India wants to get in on the global AI race, which the U.S. and China are currently dominating. As the world’s most populous country, India has a massive pool of tech talents it can tap into to help advance its AI technology. And with many companies like Nvidia and ASML barred from selling their cutting-edge technology to China, they’d likely be happy to open another market for their products in India.
