Meet Devendra Chaplot, IIT Bombay Graduate Helping Sarvam Pursue Frontier AI

Sarvam AI has strengthened its frontier artificial intelligence ambitions by bringing on Devendra Singh Chaplot as a part-time advisor. The appointment comes as the Indian AI startup prepares to develop a trillion-parameter foundation model and expand its research capabilities in both India and the United States.

Chaplot is among the few Indian-origin AI researchers with experience across several leading AI laboratories, including Mistral AI, Thinking Machines Lab and xAI. His expertise is expected to support Sarvam’s efforts as it seeks to build advanced AI models tailored for India while competing with global AI developers.

A Career Across Leading AI Research Labs

Chaplot joined Sarvam as an advisor in July and will be based in Palo Alto, California, working from the company’s U.S. research operations, according to his LinkedIn profile.

His academic journey began at IIT Bombay, where he earned a Bachelor of Technology in Computer Science and Engineering. He later moved to the United States to study at Carnegie Mellon University, completing a master’s degree in Language Technologies before earning a PhD in Machine Learning.

His doctoral research focused on intelligent autonomous navigation by combining robotics, computer vision and artificial intelligence. Before completing his PhD, he also worked as a research intern at Samsung Electronics and Apple.

Chaplot then spent more than five years at Facebook AI Research (FAIR), contributing to research in embodied AI, robotics and computer vision. His work centred on developing systems capable of understanding and navigating physical environments.

Building Experience at Frontier AI Companies

In 2023, Chaplot became one of the founding researchers at Mistral AI, the French startup that quickly emerged as a prominent competitor in the frontier AI space.

During his time there, he contributed to the development of several notable models, including Mistral 7B, Mixtral 8x7B, Mistral Large, Pixtral 12B and Pixtral Large. He also helped establish and lead Mistral AI’s U.S. office in Palo Alto, gaining experience in scaling a frontier AI company.

In early 2025, he joined Thinking Machines Lab, the startup founded by former OpenAI Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati. As Tech Lead for Data and Pre-training, he worked on the company’s Tinker training API and contributed to the development of its large language model infrastructure.

Earlier this year, Chaplot moved to xAI, where he worked on superintelligence research during a brief stint before departing after around two months.

Supporting Sarvam’s AI Vision

Sarvam recently outlined ambitious expansion plans that include building a foundation model with more than one trillion parameters. The company is also expanding its research across coding, speech, vision, cybersecurity and scientific AI while growing its presence in Silicon Valley through a San Francisco office and a Bay Area research lab.

The startup has also completed the first close of its Series B funding round, raising $234 million at a valuation of $1.5 billion.

Speaking at the Sarvam Epoch 2026 developer conference, Chaplot said that building a frontier AI company requires both experienced researchers and highly motivated talent.

“I have been part of founding teams at frontier labs. You need a handful of experts and experienced people, but we need more motivated talent who can catch up very quickly and run the company,” he said.

Chaplot also highlighted the importance of developing AI models designed specifically for India’s linguistic and cultural diversity.

“For India, we have so many languages and cultures. We want to have models that can be customised. This is the reason we absolutely need to build models here,” he said.

As Sarvam advances its plans to develop frontier AI models, Chaplot’s experience across several leading AI research organisations is expected to support the company’s long-term ambitions in artificial intelligence.