India allocates $1.24 billion for AI infrastructure boost

The goals are to promote technological self-reliance and ensure AI benefits are accessible to all.
Machine, Wheel, Flag

India’s government has greenlit a ₹10,300 Crore ($1.24 billion) funding project to enhance the country’s AI infrastructure, anticipating a collaborative effort involving public and private entities to bring this project to fruition. The main initiative, called ‘IndiaAI Compute Capacity’, is set to introduce a supercomputer equipped with at least 10,000 GPUs. However, specifics about the machine’s design and capabilities remain undisclosed.

Another significant initiative is establishing the ‘IndiaAI Innovation Centre,’ which aims to create indigenous Large Multimodal Models (LLMs) due to the legal mandate to support the nation’s 22 scheduled languages. Although languages such as Bengali, Marathi, and Telugu have extensive speaker populations exceeding 80 million, some languages have significantly fewer speakers. However, major AI companies might not prioritise developing LLMs for languages like Malayalam or Punjabi, each spoken by around 35 million people.

The funding encompasses other initiatives, including the ‘IndiaAI Startup Financing mechanism’, designed to streamline funding and accelerate the commercialisation of startups and industry-led AI projects; the ‘IndiaAI Datasets Platform’, which will receive funding to enhance public sector datasets, facilitating the development of AI applications by local firms and government agencies, and the ‘IndiaAI FutureSkills’ program, which is geared towards improving access to graduate and postgraduate AI programs, establishing Data and AI Labs to offer foundational AI courses across India, especially in areas beyond major cities.

Why does it matter?

The overarching goals of the funding initiative are to foster technological self-reliance and democratise the benefits of AI across all segments of society. India’s commitment to creating an independent AI ecosystem is evident in initiatives like developing server-grade CPUs based on the RISC-V architecture. However, the specific private partners involved in accelerating local AI development need to be outlined, and India’s relationship with major tech companies adds an element of complexity to these endeavours.