The Government of India, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, will set up a dedicated centre of excellence for artificial intelligence (AI) in education with Rs 500 crore outlay, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said while presenting the Union Budget 2025-26 today.
In her 2023 budget speech, Sitharaman had announced the establishment of three Centres of Excellence for artificial intelligence in top educational institutions. With these centres, the government aims to foster interdisciplinary research and development of cutting-edge applications on AI.
Industry leaders will collaborate with these institutions to create scalable solutions for critical sectors such as agriculture, health, and sustainable urban development.
The Government’s push for AI comes at a critical moment when an AI chatbot from China—DeepSeek R1—has come out of nowhere and made global giants like OpenAI and Microsoft sit up and take notice. Not that India needed a “DeepSeek moment,” but R1’s meteoric rise couldn’t have come sooner, at least that is what the flurry of announcements made in the last few days seems to suggest. If anything, it has jumpstarted the whole space and made countries—those which were called “hopeless” by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman—hopeful about building their own localized and bias-free AI.
This ambitious project—flagged off by IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw—aims to develop a domestic AI system that understands India’s unique culture, languages, and needs. To achieve this goal, the government is setting up a massive AI infrastructure, including a facility with 18,000 graphics processing units or GPUs. The facility will be up and running within this year.
Elsewhere, the budget 2025 focused on ten areas including giving boost to “make in India” and nurturing innovation with an eye on accelerating growth and securing inclusive developments to unlock the nation’s prosperity in the next five years, which Sitharaman said was a unique opportunity.
