India's AI Revolution: Boosting Compute Capacity through Public-Private Partnerships

The Indian government plans to enhance 'compute capacity' through viability gap funding as part of the Rs 10,372-crore India AI Mission. This initiative involves the creation of supercomputing capacity using over 10,000 GPUs to support AI development. The compute capacity is being developed via a public-private partnership model to benefit startups, MSMEs, academic institutions, and the public sector.

The Indian government is set to bolster its 'compute capacity' as part of the Rs 10,372-crore India AI Mission, Electronics and IT Secretary S Krishnan announced on Thursday. Highlighting efforts at a Deloitte India event, Krishnan noted that Rs 4,500 crore are dedicated to compute capacity alone.

Addressing future plans, Krishnan mentioned that additional support through viability gap funding might be considered based on the success of the initial compute capacity creation. Bids have been invited for cloud-based AI services, with supercomputing capabilities, consisting of over 10,000 GPUs, to be made accessible to various stakeholders.

The rising global demand for GPU-based servers underlines India's goal to foster an AI ecosystem through a public-private partnership model, making supercomputing available to innovators, startups, MSMEs, and academic institutions at subsidized rates. Up to 50% of costs may be covered by the government via vouchers.

(With inputs from agencies.)