Zoho Founder Urges India to Embrace Open-Source AI Amid US Restrictions

Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu has reacted to the US government's decision to restrict access to Anthropic's advanced AI models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, saying Indian organizations should focus on open-source alternatives instead of relying on foreign companies.

Sharing a post on X (formerly Twitter), Sridhar Vembu said the move shows how technology has become closely linked to national security and sovereignty.

Referring to the restrictions, he questioned the need to depend on overseas AI providers, writing: "Anyway, why pay money to people who don't even want to sell to you?".

In the post, Vembu said the development highlights the changing nature of global technology competition and argued that India should deepen its own research and development efforts while encouraging the use of smaller open-source AI models developed in India and China.

“Globalization is dead and Bharat must find her own way ahead,” he wrote.

Here’s what Sridhar Vembu said

This is big: all access to Mythos and Fable AI models disabled for everyone outside America.First thoughts: 1. Technology is the ultimate weapon. National sovereignty, national security, all of it is now about technology.2. Globalization is dead and Bharat must find her own way ahead. We must keep these two ideas in mind.What can our government do right now? Ensure that orgs in India embrace smaller models, both Indian and Chinese open source ones. With a bit of effort, we can make them work. Anyway, why pay money to people who don't even want to sell to you?We must deepen our R&D. Sarvam has been on it and we have been on it but remember that the latest models cost not only huge GPU budgets to train, the GPUs themselves are restricted. So we can't afford the scale of money (of the order of $100+ billion to even get in the game!) and even if we could come up with the money, we can't get all the GPUs. I would not like to ask the government to fund tens of billions of dollars on this anyway - the money has far better uses.Zoho has been pursuing alternative R&D approaches that are far, far less expensive but by its nature cutting edge R&D takes time and we are patient. I am confident we will get there. Any remaining people in India who have delusions about globalization should wake up now.