Cabinet nod for India AI mission with Rs. 10,372 crore outlay for 5 years
The Union Cabinet evening approved an outlay of Rs 10,372 crore for five years for the India AI Mission, aimed at fostering innovation in artificial intelligence through public-private partnerships.
Ahead of the general elections, the government also announced the extension of Rs 300 per LPG cylinder subsidy to poor women under the Ujjwala Yojana for the next financial year starting April 1. The move, likely to benefit nearly 100 million families, will cost the government Rs 12,000 crore.
The government had in October last year hiked the subsidy from Rs 200 per 14.2-kg cylinders for up to 12 refills per year to Rs 300 per bottle. The Rs 300 per cylinder subsidy was for 2023-24.
Under the India AI Mission, a key focus area is to develop high-end compute capacity within the country, for which the government will facilitate the setting up of more than 10,000 graphics processing units (GPUs) under the public-private partnership (PPP) model.
Additionally, an AI marketplace will be created to offer AI-as-a-service and pre-trained models to innovators.
Of the total outlay around Rs 4,500 crore would be used for building compute infrastructure and close to Rs 2,000 crore has been earmarked for financing deep-tech startups.
The India AI mission aims to develop foundational models with a capacity of more than 100 billion parameters. These models will be trained on datasets covering major Indian languages for priority sectors such as health care, agriculture, and governance. AI curation units (ACUs) will also be developed in 50-line ministries.
