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Samreen Ahmad · · 7 min readInside India’s $650m AI city bet
B1 AI Superpark doesn’t feel like it’s part of an “AI-native city” yet.
You can still smell the fresh paint. Rows of white, blue, and orange workstations line the floors, with wires running through unfinished flooring. Systems are not fully operational.
The building, located in Bengaluru, feels like something being tested in real time.
B1 AI Superpark is the first phase of an AI-native city project led by Bharat1.ai co-founder and CEO Umakant Soni. Other co-founders of the firm are AI Foundry CEO Subhashis Banerjee and real estate developer Sireesh Kupendra Reddy.
This smart city is not layered on top of existing infrastructure but is being designed and built from scratch. When completed, AI, humans, and humanoid robots will operate together as a single system, Soni says.
Image credit: Ulla
Founders and AI researchers will spend their days building new innovations, while robots handle routine tasks like sweeping, cleaning, and deliveries. Every resident will have a personal AI agent managing their schedules, errands, and daily decisions.
“This is not just a co-working space,” Soni tells Tech in Asia, pointing to the 500,000 square feet facility – roughly the same size as The Gherkin in London – that he hopes will eventually house more than 10,000 founders and AI researchers. “We are aggregating the entire ecosystem needed to build an AI economy.”
Soni is bringing years of experience to this project. He is the founder of Pi Ventures, one of India’s early deeptech venture firms, as well as the co-founder of venture studio AI Foundry and former CEO of robotics incubation center Artpark. He has also backed several AI and robotics startups.
Plugged in
B1 AI Superpark is equipped with 400 gbps connectivity to four AI clouds – Neysa, E2E, AWS, and Google Cloud’s GCP – enabling users to train, fine-tune, and test LLMs.
Around 25 startups already work out of the facility, which was inaugurated on April 19. Some of the universities Bharat1 has partnered with are IIT Kanpur, IIT Ropar, IIT Bombay, and BITS Pilani.
Workstations at B1 AI Superpark in Bengaluru, India / Photo credit: Samreen Ahmad/Tech in Asia
Soni aims to bring together over 100 startups working across different parts of the AI stack, from energy systems like solar and nuclear microreactors to robotics, sensors, and autonomous systems.
The chips behind the brain
Who wants an AI city?
Why build an AI city?
Can the model be replicated?
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In the planned 70-acre city, researchers will build by day as robots clean and cook. AI agents will run daily life for residents.
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