Indian companies look to Chinese LLMs as AI costs bite

Artificial intelligenceDeepSeek and others winning on price but concerns over foreign reliance loomIndian companies are turning to Chinese artificial intelligence models amid cost pressures, raising questions about the South Asian nation's ambitions around AI sovereignty. (Nikkei montage/Source photos by Reuters)SAYAN CHAKRABORTYJuly 13, 2026 11:50 JSTBENGALURU -- Indian companies are increasingly leaning on Chinese large language models (LLMs) developed by DeepSeek, Alibaba and Moonshot AI to contain their artificial intelligence spends, extending India's reliance on China for cutting-edge technologies despite a long history of standoffs between the neighbors.