The Centre has released ₹233 crore, representing 23.5% of the total approved financial outlay of ₹990 crore for establishing three Centres of Excellence (CoE) in artificial intelligence over a five-year period from FY2023-24 to FY2027-28. According to a written reply in the Rajya Sabha, ₹27 crore was released during FY2023-24 and FY2024-25 to consortiums of institutions in the pilot phase for competitive selection. Since then, ₹74.39 crore has been released to IIT Kanpur, ₹69.07 crore to IISc Bengaluru, and ₹62.64 crore to IIT Ropar during FY2025-26 and FY2026-27.
The three AI CoEs, announced in the Union Budget 2023-24 as part of the government's "Make AI in India and Make AI work for India" vision, are led by the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Ropar, IIT Kanpur, and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru. The centres focus on agriculture, healthcare, and sustainable cities sectors. A separate AI Centre of Excellence for Education with an outlay of ₹500 crore has been established at IIT Madras, with ₹43 crore released so far.
According to the ministry of education, the four AI CoEs are working with academic institutions, industry, and government organisations to develop AI models for sector-specific applications. The Education CoE has developed machine learning models for automatic speech recognition, optical character recognition, machine translation, and text-to-speech systems supporting Indian languages. The Agriculture CoE has created crop, pest, and disease identification models, while the Sustainable Cities CoE has developed air pollution attribution and urban flood prediction models.
The ministry stated that progress is being monitored through an apex committee comprising industry leaders and senior administrators, an independent project monitoring and review committee for tracking project-level deliverables, and periodic reviews by the central project management unit. These reviews assess technological development against approved milestones and financial utilisation. However, the reply did not provide year-wise fund utilisation by individual centres or indicate a timeline for release of the remaining allocation.
The AI CoEs are part of the Centre's broader push to build India's AI ecosystem across research, education, and innovation. In 2024, the government approved the ₹10,370 crore IndiaAI Mission to expand access to computing infrastructure, support AI startups, develop indigenous foundational models, and create AI datasets. Separately, the ministry of education has been integrating AI into school and higher education, with the Central Board of Secondary Education introducing AI as a skill subject for Classes VIII to X and as an elective in senior secondary classes, while encouraging schools to establish AI labs and promote hands-on learning in emerging technologies.
