India's Integrated Defence Staff signs an MoU with Sarvam for a tri-service AI framework covering targeting and data-fusion decision support

The framework and its scope

Sarvam co-founder Pratyush Kumar and Chief of Integrated Defence Staff Air Marshal Tejinder Singh attended the signing. In a 26 October post on X, HQ IDS described the MoU as being 'to collaborate on AI applications, research, knowledge management, training and decision-support'. According to Business Standard, the three services will share the same foundation models, agentic infrastructure and geospatial and perception systems, with human oversight retained over operational decisions. Sarvam will design, develop and deploy applications to each service's requirements and provide follow-on technical support. ThePrint's headline calls it a five-year MoU, though its text gives no basis for the term, and neither side disclosed value or project numbers.

Chanakya and a sovereign AI supply chain

Delivery falls to Chanakya, the firewalled defence division Sarvam established on 29 March, built for on-premise, air-gapped deployment. The underlying Sarvam 105B is a Mixture-of-Experts model (10.3B active parameters) open-sourced in February 2026 and covering 22 Indian languages. The company raised a USD 234 million first close of its Series B in June at a USD 1.5 billion valuation (HCLTech leading with USD 150 million) and added USD 74 million in August from investors including Nvidia.

Its defence track record includes DRONA 2.0, an educational AI launched at the Defence Services Staff College on 18 August and certified by HQ IDS and the Defence Cyber Agency. Kumar said Sarvam 'exists to build AI in India, for India', putting the country's own intelligence into the systems it depends on.

Linking to the Land Warfare Doctrine

The MoU follows closely on the Army's Land Warfare Doctrine 2026, released on 23 October, which made AI-enabled decision training a pillar. Since the 2019 creation of the Defence AI Council and Defence AI Project Agency, India's military AI effort has centred on a 70-project roadmap for state-owned enterprises; this agreement differs in entrusting a tri-service foundation to a private start-up. Including target acquisition across the sensor-to-shooter loop in scope means the design of human oversight in subsequent projects will need scrutiny.