The Union Cabinet on Thursday approved a Rs 10,371.92 crore India Artificial Intelligence Mission for the next five years, aimed at creating computing infrastructure in public-private partnerships.As many as 10,000 graphics processing units (GPUs) will be made available to startups and a marketplace will be created for this, commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal said at a press briefing in New Delhi. AI compute will be made available as a service to benefit R&D facilities and startups, he said.Elevate Your Tech Prowess with High-Value Skill CoursesOffering CollegeCourseWebsiteMITMIT Technology Leadership and InnovationVisitIndian School of BusinessISB Professional Certificate in Product ManagementVisitIIM LucknowIIML Executive Programme in FinTech, Banking & Applied Risk ManagementVisitUniversities and academic institutions working on AI will also benefit.“This compute capacity will help us take a big leap in AI in the coming years,” Goyal said.ET had first reported about the proposal in October 2023.India’s rapidly expanding AI startup and research ecosystem needs a robust compute capacity, electronics and information technology minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said. “The focus is on developing the entire ecosystem, from compute power to models, from applications to talent, and from data platform to regulatory framework,” he added.Discover the stories of your interestBlockchain5 StoriesCyber-safety7 StoriesFintech9 StoriesE-comm9 StoriesML8 StoriesEdtech6 StoriesThe development comes just a week after the government approved incentives for three chip units. “Semiconductor is done, now this. And we will aim to develop an AI chip in the next five years,” Vaishnaw said.Minister of state for electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar said: “AI is going to be the kinetic enabler for India’s digital economy. This financial outlay will fortify the IndiaAI Startup Financing mechanism, facilitating streamlined access to funding for budding AI startups and catalysing their journey from product development to commercialisation.”Startups have long been calling for a GPU cluster that they can have access to, given the scarcity and exorbitant costs of this infrastructure which meant they had to wait in long queues to access them. Investors have been saying that the country’s AI startups may attract more investments if they obtained access to a GPU cluster. For instance, Peak XV Partners managing director Rajan Anandan had last year called for the government to set up a 100,000 GPU cluster. Countries including the UK and Saudi Arabia have been investing in GPUs for their companies to get ahead in the global AI race. The government’s investment could mean Indian startups get a leg up in the competition.Rajiv Memani, chairman of professional services firm EY India, said: “India has great advantages in AI with the availability of vast digital data and tech talent. The AI Mission is particularly significant as it adds the infrastructure layer of GPU computing power through public-private partnership, which will help Indian startups and enterprises gain from cost advantages while accelerating their digital transformation and be at the forefront of innovation.”As part of the mission, two-three India innovation centres will also be set up which will at a large scale develop large multimodal models and domain-specific foundational models.Under the mission, the government will help in building high-end scalable AI computing ecosystems and promote AI applications in critical sectors.“An India AI datasets platform has also been proposed which will streamline non-personal data to benefit artificial intelligence innovation,” Goyal said.This unified data platform will be developed as a one-stop solution and non-personal data will be made available for India’s startups and researchers.The IndiaAI datasets platform, which will be developed by the Independent Business Division of government-backed IndiaAI, is slated to receive a boost to enhance accessibility, quality and utility of public sector datasets, to ensure data-driven governance and catalysing AI-based innovation and research, said Chandrasekhar.The India AI Application Development Initiative will work on AI applications in critical sectors. Startups and researchers related to the field will work on AI solutions of problem statements given by the government and others, he said.Under the Skill Development Kaushal Vikas Yojana, youngsters will be trained in AI. AI programmes will be developed at undergraduate, postgraduate and PhD-levels. In tier-2 and tier-3 cities and towns in remote areas, foundational AI courses will be made available under this mission.Early-stage and growth-stage financing will be provided to new deeptech AI startups. For safe and trusted AI, projects will be developed under the mission, which will make available tools and frameworks. A governance framework will also be developed for innovation, Goyal said.
