Parliament Question: Operational status and scale of AI compute capacity

GOVERNMENT OF INDIA MINISTRY OF ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY RAJYA SABHA UNSTARRED QUESTION NO. 3896 TO BE ANSWERED ON: 27.03.2026 OPERATIONAL STATUS AND SCALE OF AI COMPUTE CAPACITY 3896. SHRI KARTIKEYA SHARMA: Will the Minister of ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY be pleased to state: (a) the present operational status, scale of compute capacity and institutional access framework of Government-supported national Artificial Intelligence (AI) compute/GPU infrastructure made available to researchers, universities and Startups; (b) whether the facility is integrated with India’s indigenous foundation model initiatives, including BharatGen, to enable students and young developers to build Indian-language apps, creator tools and AI copilots for education and digital creator economy; and (c) the steps under the IndiaAI Mission to ensure fair allocation, data security and regional inclusion and to prevent an “AI-Divide” by providing subsidised or free GPU access to students and Startups, especially in Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities? ANSWER MINISTER OF STATE FOR ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (SHRI JITIN PRASADA) (a) to (c): India’s AI strategy is based on the Hon’ble Prime Minister's vision to democratize the use of technology. It aims to address India centric challenges, create economic and employment opportunities for all Indians. The Government approved the IndiaAI Mission on 7th March 2024. The Mission is built on seven pillars focused on compute access, foundational models, datasets, talent development, startups and industry partnerships, development of applications, and ethical AI. These efforts aim to build a self-reliant and globally competitive AI ecosystem in the country. Affordable Compute Capacity for AI Development Under IndiaAI Compute Capacity Pillar, a national AI compute capacity has been operationalized through empaneled AI service providers offering GPU access on cloud at subsidized rates to eligible users. ● As on date, 38,231 GPUs have been onboarded from 14 empaneled service providers under the IndiaAI Compute Capacity framework ● Government of India provides access to these GPUs at subsidized rates. The average rate is approximately Rs 65 per GPU per hour, except for select high-end GPUs (one third of global average) ● Apart from compute, empanelled providers are delivering storage, networking, AI platforms and other supporting services necessary for AI model development and deployment To ensure equitable access to computational resources, the IndiaAI Compute Portal has been launched. It offers AI compute, network, storage, platform and cloud services at the discounted rates to startups, MSMEs, academia, researchers, PhD scholars, students, startups and government agencies.An End User Policy for AI Compute services has been published which defines the eligibility criteria for end users and methodology for accessing the empanelled AI services on cloud at the discounted rates. Development of the Indigenous Foundational Model The IndiaAI Foundation Models pillar aims to develop India’s own large multimodal models trained on Indian datasets and languages. ● Twelve organisations and consortia, including startups, industry players and academic institutions, including Sarvam AI, Soket AI, Gnani AI, Gan AI, Avatar AI, IIT Bombay Consortium (BharatGen), GenLoop, Zentieq, Intellihealth, Shodh AI, Fractal Analytics Ltd. and Tech Mahindra Maker’s Lab, have been selected for developing Large and Small Language Models based on Indian datasets ● Financial assistance is being provided to selected organizations to cover actual compute usage costs, while an additional 25% of the compute expenditure is being earmarked to support ancillary expenses such as datasets and personnel ● Sovereign models of Sarvam AI, BharatGen and Gnani were launched during the IndiaAI Impact Summit 2026. These models have shown strong performance on Indic language benchmarks, and in some cases perform better than leading frontier models on specific tasks The resulting AI models are expected to contribute to the open-source ecosystem by making them available through AIKosh platform for other startups and researchers. This will fuel innovation across India’s startup and research community. As part of the same, Sarvam and BharatGen models are now available on AIKosh platform for the developer community to develop AI based applications. Strengthening regional AI Innovation and skilling Under the IndiaAI FutureSkills pillar, the Government is developing an extensive AI talent and research pipeline by supporting 500 PhD fellows, 5,000 postgraduates and 8,000 undergraduates. ● 27 IndiaAI Data and AI Labs have been established in Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities through NIELIT to conduct coursework in AI, data curation, annotation, cleaning and applied data science ● 543 ITIs and Polytechnics across all States/UTs have been approved to set up additional IndiaAI Data and AI Labs ● More than 250 fellowships have already been awarded under the programme to promote high-quality research in Artificial Intelligence AI-CoEs under the IndiaAI Mission A scheme has been approved for the establishment of 58 Artificial Intelligence Centres of Excellence (AI-CoEs) across States and Union Territories in a collaborative model with MeitY, State/UT and Industry Partners. These CoEs aims to nurture skilled professionals through targeted talent development programs in emerging tech domains, while empowering tech-driven startups to accelerate their growth and innovation. ******