Zoho’s Sridhar Vembu says India should focus on 'sovereign tech'

Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu has called for India to build capabilities across the entire technology stack following the Trump administration's decision to restrict access to Anthropic's Mythos 5 and Fable 5, for foreign users.

Responding to the development, Sridhar Vembu shared an X (formerly Twitter) post arguing that India's challenge goes beyond building its own AI models and requires a broader focus on what he described as "sovereign tech" — a strategy that covers every layer of technology needed to support advanced AI systems.

Sridhar Vembu: AI is only one part of the puzzle

In a post on X, Sridhar Vembu said India should not limit its ambitions to sovereign AI alone. "I would frame the issue facing Bharat as sovereign tech in general and not just sovereign AI," he wrote.According to Vembu, AI represents only the visible part of a much larger technology ecosystem. "AI is the tip of a whole pyramid of capabilities, most of it we don't have and we don't even hear about," he said.In the post, Vembu argued that many of the technologies required to support advanced AI are not as expensive as building cutting-edge AI models themselves. "Most of those capabilities are not very expensive to acquire (unlike AI itself) - they require time and talent, and far smaller amounts of money than AI," he wrote.

To explain his point, Sridhar Vembu highlighted the role of lesser-known Japanese companies in the global technology supply chain."As an example, Japanese firms we don't hear about have critical technologies that AI data centers need. Japanese play in many such critical sectors," he wrote.'We must not lose sight of the pyramid'. While supporting continued AI development efforts, Vembu warned against focusing exclusively on AI models."I would recommend a broad national effort at every layer of the tech pyramid. We must do AI R&D but we must not lose sight of the pyramid," he said.