Parliament Question: AI Research Funding in View of Growing AI Talent Pool

GOVERNMENT OF INDIA MINISTRY OF ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LOK SABHA UNSTARRED QUESTION NO. 4079 TO BE ANSWERED ON: 12.08.2026 AI RESEARCH FUNDING IN VIEW OF GROWING AI TALENT POOL 4079. SHRI E TUKARAM: Will the Minister of ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY be pleased to state: (a) the details of budget allocation and actual expenditure under the IndiaAI Mission during 2025–26 and 2026–27 along with the reasons for the lower allocation in 2026–27 compared with the Mission's projected five-year outlay; (b) whether the Government has undertaken any comparative assessment of India's Artificial Intelligence (AI) investment and R&D spending vis-à-vis major economies including the USA and China and if so, the details thereof; (c) whether the Government has assessed the adequacy of AI research funding in view of India's growing AI talent pool; (d) if so, the details of steps taken by the Government to improve utilisation of allocated funds and strengthen AI research and innovation; and (e) whether the Government proposes to enhance the IndiaAI Mission outlay and if so, the details thereof? ANSWER MINISTER OF STATE FOR ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (SHRI JITIN PRASADA) (a): The IndiaAI Mission was approved in March 2024 with an outlay of ₹10,371.92 crore over a period of five years, to develop a comprehensive indigenous AI ecosystem covering AI compute infrastructure, foundation models, datasets, applications, talent development, startup financing and Safe & Trusted AI. Budgetary allocation under the Mission has been made in a phased manner, commensurate with the implementation schedule and absorption capacity of individual Mission components, rather than being spread evenly across the five-year period. The year-wise budgetary allocation under the Mission is as follows: Financial Year Budgetary Allocation (₹ crore) 2024–25 173 2025–26 800 2026–27 1,000 (b) to (e): The Government is cognizant of the rapid pace of global investment in Artificial Intelligence and of the need to strengthen India's AI research, innovation and computing ecosystem in keeping with the country's growing AI talent base.Towards this, the Government has undertaken the following initiatives under the IndiaAI Mission to strengthen India's AI research and innovation ecosystem, build indigenous AI capabilities and enhance the country's global competitiveness: Compute: ● 15 Compute Service Providers have been empaneled over four rounds. ● 237 projects have been approved for subsidized compute support, with 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. Sovereign Models: 20 indigenous foundation model proposals, comprising 12 Large Multimodal Models and 8 Small Language Models, have been identified for support. Notable outputs already launched include: ● Sarvam AI (Sarvam 30B/105B, Indus) ● BharatGen (Param2 17B text, Patram 7B VLM, Shrutam-2 ASR) ● Gnani.AI (5B Speech to Speech) ● Varyaa (Image & Text to Video Generation) ● Avataar (Varya 14B Distilled Video-Gen) ● NeuroDX (MANAS 1 40M and 400M: neurological screening) ● Zenteiq (BrahmAI 1B Tokeniser Suite) ● Shodh AI (1.6B multi-scale physics prototype, Agentic Tool Calling framework) Application Development: ● 11 National-level Hackathons/Innovation Challenges launched. ● 20 AI solutions deployed across public-sector institutions. Safe & Trusted AI: ● 13 projects addressing bias mitigation, machine unlearning, privacy preserving AI, algorithm auditing and explainability have been selected. Center of Excellence: ● 58 AI Centres of Excellence have been approved for establishment across States and Union Territories, of which 22 have been approved and initiated across 13 States/UTs to date. Talent development: ● 686 fellowships awarded across undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral programmes in 178 institutions. ● YUVA AI for All programme completed by over 26.5 lakh individuals. IndiaAI labs: ● 27 India Data and AI Labs established, supporting training for more than 3,500 students. ● 188 additional Labs have been identified for establishment across ITIs/Polytechnics.No specific comparative assessment of India's AI investment and R&D spending vis-à-vis other economies, including the USA and China, has been undertaken by this Ministry. No proposal for enhancement of the approved outlay of the IndiaAI Mission has been formally approved or notified as on date. ******