Govt likely to open bids to onboard nearly 12,000-15,000 Nvidia GPUs

The B100 and B200 are the latest technology GPUs offered by Nvidia and are built on the cutting edge Blackwell architecture offered by the company

The Centre is likely to soon open another round of bidding to onboard about 12,000-15,000 B100 and B200 graphic processing units (GPUs) from Nvidia under the IndiaAI Mission, sources told Business Standard on Thursday. 

“A fresh round of bidding will be needed to discover new L1 prices for these latest technology GPUs. The other GPUs that had been bid for in the first round will continue to be onboarded under the (IndiaAI) Mission as per the L1 price discovered in the first round of bidding,” a senior government official said. 

The B100 and B200 are the latest-technology GPUs of Nvidia, and are built on the cutting-edge Blackwell architecture offered by the company. 

Apart from the B100s and B200s, the government is hopeful that companies will also bid for other latest-technology GPUs available in the market, another official said. 

The L1 price is the lowest price bid by a company to supply GPUs. For example, after the first three rounds of bidding under the IndiaAI Mission, the average L1 price discovered was nearly ₹115 per GPU hour while the L1 price for some of the high-end GPUs such as Nvidia's H100 was discovered around ₹140 per GPU hour.  Once the latest GPUs are onboarded under the Mission, the country will have a total of more than 50,000 GPUs, the official said. 

As of December 2025, more than 38,000 GPUs have been onboarded under the IndiaAI Mission over the three rounds of bidding, after which the government allowed continuous onboarding of GPUs by companies provided they are procured and supplied at the average L1 price of nearly ₹115 per GPU hour. 

Of the 38,000 GPUs, nearly 25,000 have been made operational and are being used by various startups, industries and academia, according to officials. 

All these GPUs will be procured and supplied by the companies as a part of the ₹10,372 crore IndiaAI Mission, which was approved by the Union Cabinet in March 2024. 

After the first round of bidding for GPUs, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (Meity) opened up a continuous empanelment process for companies wishing to place bids for procurement and supply of these high-end computing processors. The empanelment of new bidders now takes place every quarter.

 

In the first round, the government had empanelled 10 companies to procure and supply 18,693 GPUs, which included 12,896 Nvidia H100, and 1,480 Nvidia H200, MI325 and MI300X GPUs.

 

The second round of bidding saw another 15,000 GPUs being added to the overall capacity.

 

Reliance Industries-owned Jio Platforms, Tata Communications, and the Hiranandani group-owned Yotta Data Services are among the key players that passed the muster to procure and supply GPUs to startups, academics, researchers, and other users in the country. Other firms such as CMS Computers India, Ctrls Datacentres, E2E Networks, and Locuz Enterprise Solutions have also been shortlisted by Meity.

 

AI impetus

• Fresh round of bidding needed to discover new L1 prices for latest technology GPUs
• The B100 and B200 are the latest technology GPUs offered by Nvidia
• Govt hopeful that companies will also bid for other latest GPUs available in the market
• India will have over 50K GPUs once the latest ones are onboarded under the IndiaAI Mission