The US government’s export-control directive that forced Anthropic to shut out foreigners from accessing Fable 5 has triggered calls from Indian venture capital investors and AI ecosystem leaders to accelerate the country's sovereign AI ambitions. With the viability of Indian AI startups under threat, industry stakeholders warned that dependence on a handful of overseas foundation model providers exposes enterprises and governments to a high degree of geopolitical risk.
They argued that India needs to build its own AI capabilities, much like it did with digital public infra like UPI and Aadhaar.
Call for prioritising
“If this is not a wake-up call for the country, I don't know what is,” said Aakrit Vaish, cofounder of AI-focused early stage venture capital firm Activate. “India needs mission-driven teams focused on long-term AI research and development, backed by sustained capital and policy support.”
In a statement on June 12, Anthropic said the US government had issued an “expert control directive to suspend all access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 by any foreign national inside or outside the US including foreign national Anthropic employees. The net effect of this order is that we must abruptly disable Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for all our customers to ensure compliance. Access to all other Anthropic models will not be affected.”
