India's AI Mission: Government Plans To Upgrade Compute Infrastructure And Aid Startup Growth

India is gearing up for a significant leap in artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities with its AI Mission, designed to establish 'sovereign AI' and support startups.

The initiative involves capacity building within the government and a public-private partnership (PPP) model, targeting a compute capacity of 10,000 to 30,000 graphic processing units (GPUs) through PPP and an additional 1,000-2,000 GPUs through the PSU Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC).

As reported by Indian Express, Minister of State for Electronics and IT, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, has highlighted the need for Cabinet approval and explored various incentive structures for private companies.

The goal is to create a digital public infrastructure (DPI) that allows startups to access computational capacity at a reduced cost, focusing on sectors like agriculture, healthcare, and education.

In addition to building computing capacities, the government also aims to provide accessible datasets to Indian startups.

The government is also considering directives for major tech companies to share anonymised personal data with the India Datasets platform, further fostering the country's AI ecosystem.