AWS, SHI India partner to support AI development under IndiaAI Mission

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced it has teamed up with SHI India, formerly known as Locuz, to support indigenous AI model development as part of the IndiaAI Mission.

According to AWS, the partnership is designed to make AI capabilities more accessible to government departments, startups, enterprises, academic institutions and research organisations across India.

As part of the initiative, SHI India will provide access to AWS AI services, including Amazon SageMaker, enabling organisations to train and customise large language models without requiring complex AI infrastructure expertise.

Amazon SageMaker is designed to address the operational challenges of GPU-based model training at scale, with features such as automated cluster setup, checkpoint-less training and self-healing node recovery. This reduces the complexity of managing large-scale infrastructure, allowing organisations to maintain continuous training operations while lowering both training time and operational overhead.

Boosting India’s AI strengths

The collaboration also brings together AWSโ€™s generative AI technologies, including Amazon Bedrock, with SHI Indiaโ€™s local implementation capabilities. The idea: to support Indiaโ€™s push for technological self-reliance and strengthen its position in AI development.

โ€œIndia’s ambition to lead in AI is not simply about access to technology, it is about building an environment where innovation becomes the core and provides the groundwork across sectors,โ€ said Sandeep Dutta, AWS India and South Asia President.ย 

โ€œWhat truly inspires me about the IndiaAI Mission is its clarity of purpose – that real technological leadership is earned by empowering India’s innovators to solve challenges that are unique to India. 

โ€œOur collaboration with SHI India is designed to ensure that organisations across the country have both the infrastructure and the capability to turn AI from experimentation into real-world impact. This is how India will build solutions that serve citizens and set global standards.”

SHI India SVP Uttam Majumdar said the initiative would help organisations adopt AI more confidently.

โ€œBy combining AWS’s AI services with our deep understanding of Indian enterprise needs and regulatory requirements, we’re enabling organisations to adopt AI with confidence,โ€ he said.

AWS and Neura Robotics: Physical AI

AWS and Neura Robotics
Neura Robotics’ 4NE1 at work in a factory (image: Neura Robotics)

In a separate announcement, AWS announced a strategic partnership with Neura Robotics to accelerate the development and deployment of physical AI at scale. 

The partnership will also see Neura integrate its training environments with Amazon SageMaker to support AI development using both real-world sensor data and simulation, while exploring opportunities to deploy robotic systems within Amazon fulfilment centres.

AWS said the collaboration reflects a broader focus on scaling AI infrastructure globally, combining cloud computing capabilities with real-world applications across industries including robotics and logistics.

“Physical AI will only reach its full potential if intelligence can be trained, validated, and continuously improved in the real world. With AWS, we gain the infrastructure to scale the Neuraverse globally,โ€ said Neura Robotics CEO and Founder David Reger.ย 

โ€œWith Amazon, we have the opportunity to bring Physical AI into one of the most advanced operational environments in the world. This is how Physical AI moves from vision to global reality โ€“ from Europe, together for the world.โ€

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Aimee Chanthadavong
Aimee Chanthadavong

Aimee Chanthadavong has been a journalist, editor and content producer for more than a decade. During that time she's covered enterprise technology for premium websites such as ZDNet and InnovationAus as well as food and travel for Broadsheet and SBS.