Meet Devendra Chaplot, IIT-B graduate who may help Sarvam challenge OpenAI and Anthropic

Sarvam AI has big plans for India's frontier AI ambitions. As the startup gears up to build a trillion-parameter AI model, it has roped in Devendra Singh Chaplot, one of the few Indian-origin AI researchers with experience spanning Mistral AI, Thinking Machines Lab and xAI, to help make that vision a reality.Devendra Singh Chaplot will work as a part-time advisor at Sarvam. (Photos: X/@Dchaplot, Sarvam)When Sarvam hosted its Epoch 2026 developer conference in Bengaluru this week, one face quietly stole the spotlight. It wasn't a founder or an investor. It was AI researcher Devendra Singh Chaplot. One of the prominent AI researchers at Silicon Valley who has spent the past few years working at some of the world's biggest AI labs, including Mistral AI, Mira Murati's Thinking Machines Lab and Elon Musk's xAI. Now, he is bringing that experience to Sarvam, which is betting big on building frontier AI in India.Sarvam isn't just betting big. The startup has already announced plans to build a trillion-parameter foundation model from scratch while expanding its AI research in the US with a new San Francisco office and a Bay Area lab. It has also raised $234 million in the first close of its Series B funding round at a $1.5 billion valuation. And against all these big plans and funding, the company has roped in Chaplot as an advisor with a hefty paycheck.But who is Devendra Chaplot and why does his appointment matter to Sarvam?Who is Devendra Chaplot?According to his LinkedIn profile, Chaplot joined Sarvam in July as an advisor and will be based in Palo Alto, California, working from the company's US research base. Long before joining Sarvam, Chaplot had built an impressive career across some of the world's leading AI research labs.His journey began at IIT Bombay, where he earned a BTech in Computer Science and Engineering. He later moved to the US and got admission in Carnegie Mellon University, where he completed his Masters in Language Technologies before earning a PhD in Machine Learning. His doctoral research focused on intelligent autonomous navigation, bringing together robotics, computer vision and artificial intelligence. Before completing his PhD, Chaplot worked as a research intern at Samsung Electronics and Apple. He later spent more than five years at Facebook AI Research (FAIR), where he worked on embodied AI, robotics and computer vision, helping develop systems that enable machines to understand and navigate the physical world.And then came the big career break in AI. In 2023, Chaplot became one of the founding researchers at Mistral AI, the French startup that quickly emerged as one of Europe's strongest challengers to OpenAI. There, he helped build some of the company's best-known models, including Mistral 7B, Mixtral 8x7B, Mistral Large, Pixtral 12B and Pixtral Large. He also helped set up and lead Mistral's US office in Palo Alto, gaining first-hand experience of scaling a frontier AI startup.In early 2025, Chaplot joined Thinking Machines Lab, the startup founded by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati. As Tech Lead for Data and Pre-training, he worked on Tinker, the company's training API, and helped shape its large language model infrastructure.Earlier this year, he moved to Elon Musk's xAI, now operating as SpaceXAI, where he worked on superintelligence research before leaving after a brief stint. He worked at xAI for around 2 months.The move to SarvamNow, Chaplot is bringing all that experience to Sarvam, which wants to build India's own frontier AI models and compete with the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic."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 speaking at Sarvam Epoch 2026 developer conference.Chaplot also believes India needs AI models built specifically for the country's diverse languages and cultures. "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.According to his LinkedIn profile, Chaplot has joined Sarvam as a part-time advisor and will be based in Palo Alto, California, working from the company's US research lab as it expands its presence in Silicon Valley.Meanwhile, Sarvam is working on a foundational AI model with more than one trillion parameters and expanding its research across coding, speech, vision, cybersecurity and scientific AI. With Chaplot on board as an advisor, Sarvam roped in a researcher who has worked at some of the world's leading AI labs, including Mistral AI, Thinking Machines Lab and xAI. His experience could be a key asset as the startup builds its frontier AI ambitions from India.- EndsPublished By: Armaan AgarwalPublished On: Jul 31, 2026 07:52 IST