New Delhi: Encouraged by a series of policy initiatives, private sector investment in artificial intelligence in India has gathered pace, with cumulative funding reaching around $11.1 billion between 2013 and 2024, according to information tabled in the Lok Sabha by IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw.
The government highlighted recent large-ticket commitments, including Google’s plan to set up a $15 billion AI hub in Visakhapatnam and the Tata Group’s proposed $11 billion AI innovation city in Maharashtra, as signs of growing corporate confidence in India’s AI ecosystem.
At the centre of the push is the IndiaAI Mission, launched in March 2024 with an outlay of ₹10,372 crore. In less than two years, over 38,000 GPUs have been onboarded for a common compute facility for startups and academia, 12 teams have been shortlisted to build indigenous foundation models, and 30 applications have been approved for India-specific AI use cases, the government said. Talent development efforts currently support thousands of undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral students, alongside the creation of 27 India Data and AI Labs.
India is also seeking to shape the global AI discourse, having served as the founding chair of the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI) and by hosting the India AI Impact Summit 2026 in New Delhi from February 16 to 20—the first time the global summit series is being held in the Global South.
Beyond AI, the government said it is accelerating reforms to expand India’s footprint in the global space economy. Measures include the Indian Space Policy, 2023, the creation of IN-SPACe as a single-window regulator for private players, a ₹1,000-crore venture capital fund for space startups and a ₹500-crore Technology Adoption Fund to help commercialise space technologies. FDI norms have also been liberalised, allowing up to 100% foreign investment in satellite manufacturing and components.
To bolster the broader deep-tech ecosystem, the government has rolled out a National Deep Tech Startup Policy, eased norms under the Startup India programme and announced a ₹1 lakh crore Research, Development and Innovation (RDI) Fund under the Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF) to finance high-risk, high-impact projects and crowd in private capital.
According to the Economic Survey 2025–26, India’s gross expenditure on R&D stands at 0.64% of GDP, while the country’s rank in the Global Innovation Index has improved sharply from 81 in 2015 to 38 in 2025, reflecting the impact of sustained policy support for innovation-led growth.