Soket AI labs launch Pragna-1B AI model in collaboration with Google Cloud

Indian Artificial Intelligence (AI) research firm Soket AI Labs, in collaboration with Google Cloud services, announced the launch of an open-source multilingual foundation model, 'Pragna-1B', on Wednesday.

The model will provide AI services in Indian vernacular languages including Hindi, English, Bengali, and Gujarati.

“Our partnership with Google Cloud has been pivotal in the pre-training of the Pragna-1B model. By leveraging Google Cloud’s AI Infrastructure, we achieved both efficiency and cost-effectiveness in the development of Pragna-1B. Despite being trained on fewer parameters, Pragna-1B showcases unparalleled efficiency and innovation, achieving comparable performance and effectiveness in language processing tasks to similar category models,” said Abhishek Upperwal, Founder of Soket AI Labs.

“Tailored specifically for vernacular languages, Pragna-1B offers balanced language representation and enables faster and more efficient tokenization suited for organisations seeking optimised operations and enhanced functionality,” he further added.

Soket AI Labs and Google Cloud will further deepen their collaboration, soon listing Soket’s AI developer platform on the Google Cloud Marketplace and the Pragna series of models on the Google Vertex AI model registry.

“This integration will provide developers with a powerful, streamlined experience for fine-tuning models. The intuitive interface of Soket’s AI Developer Platform, combined with the high-performance resources of Vertex AI and TPUs, will ensure optimal efficiency and scalability for AI projects,” said the company.

Additionally, this collaboration will enable technical collaboration on foundational work for training large-scale models and curating high-quality datasets for Indian languages, according to the company.

“We are thrilled to partner with Soket AI Labs to democratise AI innovation in India. Built on Google Cloud, the launch of Pragna-1B marks a pioneering leap in Indian language technology, offering enhanced scalability and efficiency for organisations,” said Bikram Singh Bedi, Vice President and Country Managing Director, Google Cloud India.

Founded in 2019, Soket has pivoted from being a decentralised data exchange for smart cities to an AI research firm in recent years.