Cabinet Allocates Rs 10,300 Crore For AI Mission Aiming To Subsdise Startups And Computing Infrastructure, Here's All About It

The Union Cabinet is expected to approve the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Mission on Thursday (7 March), which will involve allocating funds to subsidise private companies setting up AI compute capacity in India.

The mission will also provide seed funding for AI startups, as per a report by The Indian Express.

The total allocation for the AI Mission is expected to be around Rs 10,300 crore.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the Mission last year with the goal of enhancing AI capabilities in the country, particularly in sectors like agriculture, healthcare, and education and supporting startups and entrepreneurs.

The AI Mission will focus on four key areas: AI research, funding startups developing AI chips, offering viability gap funding (VGF) for private companies establishing data centres for AI use, and creating computing capacity within the government.

The government is considering a public-private model for building computing capacity, including in PSUs like the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC).

Viability gap funding may be offered to private companies setting up data centres domestically, with a tender inviting companies to apply for funding for their projects.

India aims to build a compute capacity of 10,000 to 30,000 GPUs under the PPP model and an additional 1,000 to 2,000 GPUs through the C-DAC. Compute capacity is crucial for training and building AI systems but can be challenging for smaller businesses to procure.

The Cabinet's decision comes after approving chip projects worth Rs 1.26 lakh crore, including the country's potentially first commercial fabrication plant.

This move aligns with strategies in other regions, such as the European Union, which aims to provide access to hardware like supercomputers to enable innovation in AI.

India's AI Mission may also integrate the National Supercomputing Mission to create in-house computing capacity within the C-DAC.

Additionally, funds will be allocated for setting up an AI innovation center to facilitate collaboration between academia, industry, and government on AI applications.