Viswam.AI launches Summer of AI, an internship program to train 1 lakh AI Engineers and create world’s first Telugu LLM

Viswam.AI launches Summer of AI, an internship program to train 1 lakh AI Engineers and create world’s first Telugu LLM

Hyderabad, 8th May 2025: Sata Sahasra Yagam, the flagship internship by Viswam.AI, aims to empower 1 lakh engineering students with AI skills across Telangana and Andhra Pradesh while developing the world’s first Telugu Large Language Model (LLM). The month-long program, structured in collaboration with IIIT Hyderabad, Swecha, Meta, HySEA, Ozonetel and others, begins on May 15, 2025. Over four weeks, participants will gain expertise in AI/ML fundamentals, data preparation, model building, and deployment, culminating in contributions to a community-driven Telugu LLM.

The hybrid curriculum is structured to bridge theoretical learning with real-world AI solution development. Focuses on foundational AI skills, AI and ML concepts, LLM models and GenAI development, and understanding distributed computing techniques to train the LLMs- Telugu language model here. Participants will understand the full AI LLM development lifecycle from data collection, data curation, building Indic (Telugu) datasets, and there from actually build an AI model from the data thus collected.

The internship is part of the Telugu LLM initiative, and the interns will work on digital-first data gathering- including folk literature, historical texts, and regional news archives, help curate this data and eventually be part of the team that builds the Telugu LLM. Top performers may earn follow on deeper internships with tech majors and also research institutions like IIITH. The internship concludes with a Grand Finale featuring a live music concert by Ram Miryala, with more singers expected to join.

A core pillar of Summer of AI is its community-centric approach. The program’s hybrid model blends online learning with in-person collaboration at seven centers across Telangana, including Warangal, Hyderabad, and Karimnagar. Students will attend weekend workshops for hands-on projects. By involving students in the entire AI lifecycle—from data collection to model deployment—Sata Sahasra Yagam fosters a workforce capable of designing hyperlocal AI solutions. The internship’s outcomes will directly contribute to open-source repositories and Viswam.AI’s research on low-resource language AI, ensuring Telugu communities retain ownership of their digital future.

The Telugu LLM initiative is attempting to evolve a new approach for LLM development, by bridging AI education with grassroots cultural preservation, as a community sourced effort. The program addresses two critical gaps: India’s AI talent shortage and Telugu’s underrepresentation in digital ecosystems—fewer than 0.1% of online resources currently support Telugu.