Budget 2025: FM announces Rs 500 crore for AI in education to boost India AI mission

In the Union Budget 2025, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitaraman revealed several important measures aimed at assisting India in keeping pace with the rapidly advancing AI landscape. In the budget, the ministry has designated Rs 500 crore to establish a new center of excellence in artificial intelligence for education. In addition, she also revealed significant initiatives like investigating Deep Tech Funds of Funds and ensuring smartphones are affordable.

During her speech in Lok Sabha, she stated, “I had announced three centres of excellence in artificial intelligence for agriculture, health and sustainable cities in 2023. Now, a centre of excellence in artificial intelligence for education will be setup with a total outlay of Rs 500 crore.”

Nirmala Sitharaman also unveiled plans for the establishment of five National Centres of Excellence for Skilling, aimed at equipping youth with industry-relevant expertise. “These centres will be set up with global partnerships to support Make for India, Make for the World manufacturing,” Sitharaman stated. The initiative will focus on developing comprehensive curriculum, training trainers, implementing a skill certification framework, and conducting regular assessments.

This follows closely after the IT ministry revealed that India will launch its own large language model (LLM) this year. Union Minister of Electronics and IT, Ashwini Vaishnaw, has asserted that the country will see its inaugural in-house LLM model in 10 months. The model will resemble ChatGPT and DeepSeek models, marking an important advancement in the realm of AI.

India’s aspirations in AI are supported by a strong infrastructure, surpassing its original goal of 10,000 GPUs and currently reaching 18,600. This sophisticated computing capability is essential for training AI models. Most of these GPUs consist of high-performance NVIDIA H100 and H200 models, as well as MI325 units. To provide some context, DeepSeek AI utilized 2,500 GPUs for training, whereas ChatGPT employed 25,000. Boasting more than 15,000 high-quality GPUs, India is now solidly established in the worldwide AI competition. Vaishnaw highlighted that this infrastructure will be crucial for the nation’s AI objectives, facilitating the creation of models capable of competing with the top ones globally.