Government Expands Sovereign AI Infrastructure Through IndiaAI Mission and Semiconductor Initiatives
The Ministry of Electronics & IT provided a comprehensive update on India's AI and semiconductor infrastructure development, submitted by Union Minister of State Shri Jitin Prasada in Lok Sabha on 05.08.2026. The government's strategy is based on democratizing technology use to address India-centric challenges and create economic and employment opportunities, while building technological sovereignty across the AI value chain.
IndiaAI Mission Progress
The IndiaAI Mission was approved on 7th March 2024 with a total outlay of ₹10,371.92 crore over five years to establish a robust and inclusive AI ecosystem. Under sovereign models, 20 indigenous foundation model proposals were selected from 506 applications, comprising 12 Large Multimodal Models and 8 Small Language Models, with intellectual property retained by applicants. Notable outputs include Sarvam AI's 30 billion and 105 billion parameter models and Indus, Gnani.AI's speech-to-speech model, BharatGen's multilingual foundation models (Param2-17B, Patram-7B and Shrutam-2), and Avataar AI's video generation model.
In compute infrastructure, 15 Compute Service Providers have been empaneled over four rounds, with 237 projects approved for subsidized compute support and 93.18 lakh GPU hours sanctioned. A Purchase Order has been issued for a High-Performance AI Compute System of approximately 1.1 EFLOPS at the NIC Data Centre, Shastri Park, Delhi. For application development, 11 National-level Hackathons/Innovation Challenges were launched, resulting in 62 AI prototypes developed and 20 AI solutions deployed across public-sector institutions.
The mission has approved 58 AI Centres of Excellence across States and Union Territories, with 22 already approved and initiated across 13 States/UTs. Additionally, 13 projects addressing bias mitigation, machine unlearning, privacy preserving AI, algorithm auditing and explainability have been selected under Safe & Trusted AI initiatives.
National Mission on Interdisciplinary Cyber-Physical Systems
The Department of Science & Technology is implementing the National Mission on Interdisciplinary Cyber-Physical Systems (NM-ICPS) with an outlay of ₹3,660 crore approved by the Union Cabinet. The mission has established 25 Technology Innovation Hubs (TIHs) at academic institutions specializing in domains including AI & Machine Learning, Robotics, IoT & Internet of Everything (IoE), Cybersecurity, Mining, Quantum Technologies and FinTech. These TIHs undertake technology development and translational research, support human resource development through fellowship programs, and foster innovation through startup funding, incubation, and technology transfer to government and industry.
Semiconductor Manufacturing Initiatives
Inspired by the vision of AtmaNirbhar Bharat, the government has adopted structured policy initiatives for semiconductor development, recognizing its strategic importance for the overall economy and national security. The Semicon India Programme launched in January 2022 has approved 12 manufacturing projects with total committed investment of ₹1.64 lakh crore, of which 3 projects have already started commercial production.
Building on this success, the Union Cabinet approved Semicon 2.0 on 15th July 2026 with an outlay of ₹1,27,500 crore to accelerate design and development of Indian designed chips, expand semiconductor fabrication units (fabs) and advanced packaging, and support wider semiconductor ecosystem development including materials, gases and equipment.
International Cooperation and Global Standing
India joined the Pax Silica coalition at the India AI Impact Summit 2026 along with the United States and other partner nations to secure the global silicon supply chain and strengthen a resilient technology ecosystem. According to the Stanford Global AI Vibrancy Report published in November 2025, India is ranked 3rd globally in AI competitiveness and ecosystem vibrancy, and is the second largest contributor to GitHub AI projects. While India's compute ecosystem currently relies on globally sourced GPUs, steps are being taken to reduce this dependence over time through domestic infrastructure development.