Union Cabinet Approves AI Mission With Capital Outlay Of Rs 10,372 Crore

Aiming to set up a holistic ecosystem for the development of artificial intelligence in India, the Union Cabinet on Thursday approved the setting up of an AI Mission with an outlay of over Rs 10,000 crore. 

The focus of the mission will be to develop an end-to-end structure starting with the education of youngsters in the emerging field to setting up innovation centres and creating compute capacity.

Announcing the Cabinet decisions, Union Minister Piyush Goyal said the mission is in line with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vision of democratising technology and making it available to every citizen, and that a capital outlay of Rs 10,372 crore has been approved for it. 

Listing out seven pillars of the mission, an official release said public and private sectors will collaborate to create a compute capacity of more than 10,000 graphics processing units (GPUs) to cater to the needs of startups and promote research in the area. 

AI innovation centres will also be set up to develop Large Multimodal Models which can work with multiple data types and help in key sectors like agriculture and health. 

On education and talent, the release said India ranks first in terms of AI skill penetration and access will be facilitated to courses in the sector at the undergraduate, postgraduate and PhD levels. In tier 2 and 3 cities, 200 AI and data labs will be set up to impart foundational-level courses. 

Some of the other pillars are facilitating access to datasets and ensuring the responsible development of AI. 

Welcoming the move, Minister Of State for Electronics and Information Technology, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, said the mission will catalyse India's AI ecosystem.

In a post on X, the minister also said the programme will position India as a “force shaping the future of AI for India and for the world”.