Latest AI News
OpenAI Said to Be Considering Lower Token Pricing Amidst Growing Rivalry With Anthropic
OpenAI might be considering significantly reducing the prices it charges customers for using its AI models, according to a report. The ChatGPT maker is said to be evaluating a strategy where it may slash its token pricing, which is the usage-based metric commonly used by AI companies to bill customers. The move is reportedly driven by the company's intensifying rivalry with Anthropic, which has also been rumoured to lower its prices in the future.
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MNIT Jaipur Gets Advanced Quantum and AI Labs, Access to Lam Research’s Semiverse Platform
The Semiverse Solutions platform will enable students to study semiconductor chip structures in 3D, understand fabrication processes, and simulate manufacturing workflows in a virtual environment.
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Spain’s Theker Bags Largest Ever European Robotics Series A Funding at $85 Mn
This investment, led by CRV and joined by major players such as Samsung and LVMH, aims to enhance Theker’s AI-powered robots.
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Kerala Signs Strategic Partnership with Inductus Group to Boost GCC and IT Investments
Under the collaboration, Infoparks Kerala and Inductus Group will work together to promote the state’s strengths in talent availability, digital infrastructure, and innovation capabilities.
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This AI Edtech Startup Fights Short Attention Spans by Teaching on WhatsApp
Instead of adapting traditional courses for mobile screens, SkillBytes AI is building a chat-native learning experience designed around short conversations, interactive quizzes, and behavioural insights.
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LTM Launches AI Talent Programme to Train 1,000 Engineers for Enterprise Deployments
LTM has launched AI 1000, a programme to train over 1,000 AI-certified engineers as enterprises ramp up AI adoption, with a focus on developing forward deployed engineers.
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IndiaAI Mission-Backed Avataar.ai Launches Indigenous Video AI Model Varya
The company says its distilled architecture cuts video generation to four steps, lowering inference costs to ₹ 0.48 per second.
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Marine Robotics Co Rekise Bags $9.7M Led by Accel, Nikhil Kamath’s NKSquared
Rekise Marine will use the funding to finalise sea trials for its submarine, Jalkapi.
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Happiest Minds Launches Agentic AI Platform to Automate Software Engineering Tasks
The platform deploys autonomous software engineering agents across development workflows, signalling a shift from AI assistants to AI systems capable of executing end-to-end engineering tasks with human oversight.
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TCS Launches Oracle AI Data Lab in Kolkata, Plans Expansion to 4 More Cities
TCS’ Oracle AI Data Platform Lab marked a deeper push into enterprise AI and data modernisation.
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Keysight, Siemens Software Partner for AI-Led PLM Testing
The partnership brings AI-based test automation to Teamcenter users managing product lifecycle systems.
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Cheaper, faster, and culturally aware, Avataar’s video AI is built for India’s scale
India’s AI model output has been slow compared to the U.S., Europe, and China. Only a few startups are releasing models, and most of them are large language models or voice models. To encourage more development, the government launched theIndia AI Mission, a roughly $1.2 billion initiative that — among other things — gives selected startups access to subsidized GPU compute in exchange for releasing their models publicly. One of the 12 startups selected for the program,Avataar AI, has launched a new video model called Varya that is built to understand local context — such as identifying different festivals, food, and clothing. The Peak XV-backed startup, which focuses oncreating video tools for e-commerce, didn’t build Varya from scratch. It started with Wan 2.2, a publicly available video generation model released by Alibaba, and used a technique called distillation — essentially compressing the model’s capabilities into a leaner, faster version optimized for Avataar’s specific use cases. The result is a model that runs in four steps rather than Wan 2.2’s 50, producing video 10 times faster and at a fraction of the cost. To put that in concrete terms: using an NVIDIA H200 GPU, Varya can generate a 5-second 720p clip in 45 seconds, compared to 1,230 seconds for Wan 2.2. The most striking aspect of Varya may be its price. The company plans to charge ₹0.48 ($0.005) per second of video on its hosted service — far cheaper than models like Veo, Kling, Luma, and Runway, which typically charge $0.10 or more per second. That’s a roughly 20x price difference. “India is a video-first market. We see this across every large consumer internet product in India: video wins over text. Current AI video models are too expensive for population-scale use in India. If video AI is going to reach students, teachers, MSMEs, creators, enterprises, and public services, costs have to come down dramatically. Cost is the biggest unlock for AI adoption in India,” Peak XV’s managing director Rajan Anandan told TechCrunch. Image and video generation models often miss cultural nuances and produce stereotyped or generic outputs — a problem TechCrunch hasreported on before. Avataar AI says it has used curated data to train Varya to recognize cultural nuances including food, clothing, architecture, and festivals. Varya will be released as an open-weight model onIndia’s AI Kosh portal— the Indian government’s centralized repository for publicly available AI models and datasets — along with its training data, meaning developers can self-host or modify it for their own needs. Avataar also plans to make the model available to its enterprise customers and says it is open to partnerships with video tools including Higgsfield and Adobe Firefly. Anyone can try it now on its website using text prompts or reference images. Varya’s launch reflects a fundamental tradeoff in India’s AI ambitions. Industry veterans have noted that India can make its mark in AI bycreating applicationsand a robustdeveloper ecosystemrather than competing on foundation models. And there’s a reason for that pragmatism: model development has been slower in India than in global rivals due to alack of computeand limited quality data availability. The India AI Mission is also part of a broader government push to close that gap. Last year, it selected 12 startups — Avataar AI among them — to develop AI models and provided them with cost-efficient compute. Earlier this year, IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said India aims to attract$200 billionin AI investment by 2028 and more thandoubleits GPU capacity within six months.
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