The Union cabinet on Thursday approved a ₹10,371.92 crore corpus to fund Artificial Intelligence computing infrastructure and start-ups in the AI space in India. This corpus would be used to provide viability gap funding, subsidising projects that may face steeper costs for setting up datacentres and other such facilities in India. The funds will also contribute to application development for government use.

The corpus represents the Union government’s largest direct investment into AI in particular, even as efforts to bring more semiconductor fabrication, design and assembly facilities are underway. 

The corpus will be disbursed through the India AI Mission launched last year. “In the Artificial Intelligence area, the progress and solutions from India will be strengthened,” Union Minister of Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal said announcing the corpus. “Graphics Processor Units will be made in Public-Private Partnership (PPP) mode,” Mr. Goyal added. 

“There will be a governance framework for AI projects, tools and frameworks in India,” Mr. Goyal added. “Two to three India AI innovation centres to promote Artificial Intelligence in domain-specific foundational models.” 

Non-personal data

“There has also been a proposal to create the India AI Datasets platform, which will streamline how non-personal data can be made available for AI,” Mr. Goyal said. “Non-Personal Data will be available to start-ups and researchers.” The Cabinet said in a note distributed to the press that “[a] unified data platform will be developed to provide a one-stop solution for seamless access to non-personal datasets to Indian start-ups and Researchers.”