India has taken a significant leap forward in artificial intelligence development with the expansion of its national computing infrastructure to 34,000 Graphics Processing Units (GPUs), positioning the country as an emerging powerhouse in global AI research.
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has overseen this massive scale-up through the IndiaAI Mission, which received a budgetary allocation of over ₹10,300 crore (approximately $1.2 billion) in March 2024. The initiative has added 16,000 new GPUs to the existing 18,000, creating a robust shared computing facility essential for training advanced AI models.
"The government is actively shaping an AI ecosystem where computing power and research opportunities are accessible at an affordable cost," IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw stated, emphasizing the focus on democratizing technology. Eligible users, including startups, academia, and research institutions, can access AI compute at up to 40% reduced cost under the program.
A highlight of this initiative is Bengaluru-based Soket AI's ambitious project to build India's first open-source 120-billion-parameter language model specifically optimized for Indian languages. Selected by the government alongside Gnani.ai and Gan.ai to create next-generation large language models, Soket AI aims to reduce India's reliance on foreign AI technologies while addressing the unique linguistic diversity of the country.
Soket AI has already demonstrated its capabilities with Pragna-1B, a smaller 1.25-billion-parameter multilingual model supporting Hindi, Gujarati, Bangla, and English. The company created specialized datasets including 'Bhasha-wiki,' which consists of 44.1 million articles translated from English Wikipedia into six Indian languages.
This development comes amid a shifting global AI landscape, where significant breakthroughs are increasingly occurring outside traditional Western research centers. China's recent advancements with models like DeepSeek-R1 have sparked similar national initiatives worldwide, as countries seek to establish technological sovereignty in AI development.
By expanding AI infrastructure, fostering indigenous AI models, and investing in talent development, India is creating an inclusive and innovation-driven ecosystem that aims to ensure AI benefits reach businesses, researchers, and citizens across its diverse population.