Cabinet approves Rs 10,372-crore India AI mission

Aimed at creating computing infrastructure in public-private partnership mode, the Union Cabinet has approved a Rs 10,371.92-crore artificial intelligence programme. Under the India AI program, the government will aid in building a high-ending scalable AI computing ecosystem, undertake development and deployment of indigenous large multimodal models; promote AI applications in critical sectors and so on. The program will also give support to accelerate deeptech AI startups.

"With an outlay of Rs 10,372 crore, one very ambitious India AI Mission that will encourage AI segment and ongoing research in this field...has been approved by the cabinet," Union Minister Piyush Goyal said.

Through IndiaAI Independent Business Division (IBD) under Digital India Corporation (DIC), the mission will be implemented.

During the media briefing the minister said that supercomputing capacity which will comprise more than 10,000 GPUs (graphics processing unit) will be made available to various stakeholders for creating an AI ecosystem.  

The demand of GPU-based server has increased compared to CPU-based servers as GPU-based server can process data at a higher speed.  

Access to the AI supercomputing infrastructure will be given to startups, academia, researchers and industry.    

Under the AI Mission, an India AI Innovation Centre (IAIC) will be established and it will be leading academic institution, ensuring streamlined implementation and retention of top research talent.

Funds approved by the Cabinet will enable IAIC to spearhead the development and deployment of foundational models, with a specific emphasis on indigenous Large Multimodal Models (LMMs) and domain-specific models, leveraging edge and distributed computing for optimal efficiency.

The financial outlay will fortify the India AI Startup Financing mechanism, facilitating streamlined access to funding for budding AI startups and catalysing their journey from product development to commercialisation.

Also, a National Data Management Office will be set up under the mission and it will coordinate with various government departments and ministries to improve the quality of data and make them available for AI development and deployment.