TL;DRIndia debates sovereign AI after the US forced Anthropic to kill Fable 5, with proposals for a $5B fund and calls to embrace open-source models.
When the US government ordered Anthropic to shut down Fable 5 and Mythos 5 on 12 June, the export control directive was aimed at restricting foreign nationals from accessing America’s most capable AI. In India, Anthropic’s second-largest market, it landed as a warning shot about what happens when your AI infrastructure runs on someone else’s politics.
The suspension cut off Indian developers and enterprises from Claude’s most advanced models overnight. India’s Claude run-rate revenue had doubled since October 2025, and Tata Consultancy Services had announced a partnership just one day earlier, on 11 June, to train 50,000 employees on Claude and build a dedicated Anthropic business unit. That deal is now in limbo.
The timing has turned what was already a simmering debate about AI sovereignty into a full strategic reckoning. Proposals that sounded ambitious a week ago now sound urgent.
The 💜 of EU techThe latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol' founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It's free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!Mohandas Pai, former Infosys CFO and one of India’s most prominent tech investors, has called for a ₹50,000 crore (roughly $5 billion) annual sovereign AI fund. He has also proposed a ₹2 lakh crore (approximately $21 billion) credit guarantee to finance cloud infrastructure, hardware procurement, and semiconductor development. The figures dwarf the government’s existing commitment.
