Nvidia committed to supporting IndiaAI Mission, says Ashwini Vaishnaw

Minister for Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw spoke to Moneycontrol in an exclusive interview on March 9 in Bengaluru

High-end graphics processing units (GPU) manufacturer Nvidia has committed to support India's recently-launched Rs 10,372 crore IndiaAI Mission to drive up artificial intelligence computing capacity in the country, Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on March 9.

"We are in discussion with players like NVIDIA. They have committed to support our AI mission in a very big way, very major way," the minister for electronics and information technology said in an exclusive interview with Moneycontrol in Bengaluru.

The IndiaAI mission, launched on March 7, proposes government support for the development of AI chips, through a public-private partnership (PPP) mode. It aims to create an ecosystem comprising AI computer infrastructure of 10,000 or more GPUs.

Vaishnaw's comments come a day after a senior official in the ministry said that AI GPUs under the government's Rs 10,372 crore AI Mission will be available in the next 18-24 months.

"Under the AI mission, our focus will be on creating a common compute facility which is available both to the innovators, researchers, students, people who want to build new models as well as people who want to get the inference out of the existing models. With that, we hope that we will be able to create a very robust AI ecosystem and our focus will be on creating solutions that are relevant to our country," Vaishnaw said.

Also read: Decoding IndiaAI: Inside India's Rs 10,372-crore plan to boost AI infrastructure

The minister said that the government's focus when it comes to creating solutions will be in the sectors of healthcare, agriculture, weather forecasting, logistics, and so on.

"In parallel, we are working on creating the educational (ecosystem). Like in the semiconductor, like in telecom... Secondly, we also want to create course curriculums that are tailored for the digital world. We'll tailor the course curriculums and support the BTech, MTech, and PhDs in cutting-edge AI technologies," Vaishnaw added.

The IndiaAI mission, apart from creating GPU infrastructure and creating an educational ecosystem, also includes the launch of the India AI Datasets Platform, a platform where entrepreneurs and startups can access non-personal datasets.

The government will also design an AI marketplace to offer AI as a service and pre-trained models to AI innovators. Under this initiative, support will be given to deep-tech AI startups.