Amaravati/ Delhi, India -- February 20, 2026: The Government of Andhra Pradesh today announced plans to collaborate with IBM (NYSE: IBM), BharatGen and NxtGen to support its vision for building a Swadeshi AI stack, a sovereign AI technology framework. This stack will enable citizen-centric AI solutions in Telugu and other regional languages while strengthening governance and service delivery across priority sectors. The Swadeshi AI stack aims to build core AI capabilities tailored to India’s linguistic and cultural context. It will unify AI models, government and other datasets, software platform, and deployment tools within a single framework that can operate seamlessly on sovereign cloud platforms or on-premises data centers. As part of the collaboration, IBM, BharatGen and NxtGen will offer technical and strategic advice to the government related to the design, architecture, and operating model of the Swadeshi AI stack.

IBM will support this initiative by bringing its technologies and expertise in data and AI, hybrid cloud, governance, automation, and security. With deep expertise in optimizing, scaling and securing AI workloads, IBM envisions a platform approach in which sovereignty is enabled by design, enabling model developers and infrastructure providers to rapidly deploy and operate AI workloads with full control over data, operations, and governance.

BharatGen strengthens the Government of Andhra Pradesh’s Swadeshi AI Stack through sovereign AI models built entirely in India and designed to reflect the nation’s linguistic and cultural diversity. BharatGen’s multilingual foundation models, with native support for Telugu and other Indian languages, form the intelligence layer of this collaboration enabling government departments, startups, academia, and industry to co-create citizen-centric solutions that advance governance, welfare delivery, and livelihood enhancement across the state.

As a provider of sovereign cloud, GPU infrastructure and AI-driven data centre services in India, NxtGen will support this initiative by enabling secure, India-hosted cloud and GPU infrastructure optimised for AI training and inferencing workloads.The company will also provide scalable deployment environments designed to meet data localisation, security, and operational compliance requirements. This infrastructure will support the hosting of foundational and domain-specific models while ensuring resilience, security, and operational control within Indian jurisdiction.

"I am delighted that Andhra Pradesh is partnering with IBM, BharatGen and NxtGen to build our Swadeshi AI Stack," said Nara Lokesh, Minister of IT, Electronics and HRD, Government of Andhra Pradesh. "This collaboration marks an exciting step toward creating a sovereign, citizen-first AI ecosystem rooted in India’s languages and values. Together, we are laying the foundation for secure, inclusive and hyper-personalised public services that will position Andhra Pradesh as a national leader in responsible and applied AI."

"Swadeshi (Indigenous) models and sovereign GPU infrastructure are key enablers for building innovative solutions, scaling adoption and transforming government services, while still tailoring to unique local needs," said Sandip Patel, Managing Director, IBM India and South Asia. "Through this collaboration, IBM will bring its experience and technologies in AI and governance to help build AI capabilities that are secure, scalable, trustworthy and designed to deliver meaningful outcomes for citizens and institutions."

"BharatGen is committed to support AI infrastructure by building Text, Speech, and Vision models for 1.4 billion people across 22+ Indian languages,” said Prof. Ganesh Ramakrishnan, Founding Director, Bharatgen Technology Foundation. “We will co-create advanced, post-trained Telugu/multi-lingual language AI models that build upon BharatGen’s foundational text, speech and vision document models.”

“Sovereign AI needs to be supported by sovereign infrastructure,” said A S Rajgopal, MD & CEO, NxtGen. “The sovereign AI stack unifies heterogeneous GPU environments and enables optimised models to run efficiently on CPUs. This will reduce the cost of citizen services and pave way for more innovations. Andhra Pradesh’s Swadeshi AI stack is built on a trusted, compliant, and scalable foundation that will enablepopulation-scale AI adoption while preserving data, operational, and technological sovereignty.”

The collaboration supports the government of Andhra Pradesh’s broader vision to establish the state as a leader in responsible, inclusive, and applied AI. As part of this vision, the government aims to enable advanced AI-powered hyper-personalized citizen services, foster an enabling ecosystem for startups, and improve governance through scalable digital public infrastructure.

About IBM

IBM is a leading provider of global hybrid cloud and AI, and consulting expertise. We help clients in more than 175 countries capitalize on insights from their data, streamline business processes, reduce costs and gain the competitive edge in their industries. Thousands of government and corporate entities in critical infrastructure areas such as financial services, telecommunications and healthcare rely on IBM's technology to affect their digital transformations quickly, efficiently and securely. IBM's breakthrough innovations in AI, quantum computing, industry-specific cloud solutions and consulting deliver open and flexible options to our clients. All of this is backed by IBM's long-standing commitment to trust, transparency, responsibility, inclusivity and service.  For more information, visit www.ibm.com

About BharatGen

BharatGen is India's first government-funded sovereign AI initiative, building foundational multimodal LLMs across 22+ Indic languages. BharatGen is spearheaded by IIT Bombay with consortium partners across the country, it is built on a simple but powerful idea: AI should work for every Indian, in every Indian language. Supported under the National Mission on Interdisciplinary Cyber-Physical Systems under the Department of Science & Technology and by the IndiaAI Mission under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, BharatGen brings together leading institutions to deliver inclusive, scalable AI solutions integrating text, speech, and vision for India’s governance and societal needs. Learn more at bharatgen.com 

About NxtGen

NxtGen is India’s largest Sovereign Cloud and AI provider, serving more than 1000+ customers across the country. NxtGen operates– SpeedCloud®- a public cloud platform, SpeedCloud Supreme – an alternative to private cloud and Industry vertical clouds for the Government and Financial Services. NxtGen delivers value to its customers by ensuring superior performance at lower cost. NxtGen AI portfolio unifies GPU platforms from NVIDIA, AMD & Intel and provides a wide choice of highly optimised models to build enterprise use cases. NxtGen is working to truly democratise the cloud and AI technologies by making them viable for enterprises of all sizes. For more information, visit https://nxtgen.com