Chicago – February 23, 2026
An Indian company has unveiled a new artificial intelligence model that is designed to run on basic phones and without an internet connection, a move that could expand AI accessin remote regions of the world.
Sarvam AI, a Bengaluru-based company, announced its new suite of models during the India AI Impact Summit in Delhi, an event which concludes on Saturday and has attracted some of the biggest names in tech as keynote speakers.
It is the first time the flagship global AI summit has been hosted in the global South, and India has used the event to position itself as a contender in a sector dominated by the US and China. The summit has featured a series of domestically-trained AI systems across sectors, including education, voice technology, healthcare and governance.
But the most talked-about launch was Sarvam’s unveiling of two new large-language AI models, updated speech and vision systems, and an AI assistant that was shown running directly on a Nokia-style brick phone without need for the internet.
The system forms part of what the company calls Sarvam Edge – a platform designed to operate directly on smartphones and laptops rather than relying on remote data centres. Sarvam says this allows speech recognition, translation and text-to-speech functions even in areas with weak or no connectivity, a significant factor in parts of India and other developing regions where mobile internet remains inconsistent.
