India AI Summit draws $250B infrastructure commitments, $20B VC deeptech investments
Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said the summit saw participation from over 5 lakh visitors, reflecting strong domestic and global engagement with India's AI push.
India's AI Impact Summit has secured investment commitments of over $250 billion for infrastructure and about $20 billion for VC deeptech investments, said Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, calling the event a "grand success."
As part of the summit, the New Delhi Declaration on AI Impact has been endorsed by 88 countries and international organisations, reflecting a broad-based global consensus on leveraging AI for economic growth and social good, according to a PIB release.
Vaishnaw said the event had overwhelming public support and saw participation from over 5 lakh visitors, reflecting strong domestic and global engagement with India's AI push.
"There is a huge consensus on the declaration, we just want to maximise the numbers, given the size of the summit that has happened," he said.
The India AI Impact Summit brought together global policymakers, industry leaders, and technology experts, positioning India as a key player in shaping international AI governance and infrastructure development.
"More than 5 lakh visitors participated in the exhibition, learnt a lot, and interacted with many experts from around the world. We had practically every major AI player in the world participating in large numbers. We had so many startups getting the opportunity to showcase their work. Overall the quality of discussion was phenomenal," Vaishnaw said.
Be it the ministerial dialogue, the leaders' plenary, the main inauguration function, or the summit overall, the quality of participation and dialog was phenomenal, Vaishnaw pointed out.
"Everybody felt happy that we have brought the discussion about responsible and ethical AI to the forefront," he said.
The investment pledged has crossed $250 billion for infra-related investments and about $20 billion for VC deeptech investments, which have been committed by investors, Vaishnaw said, noting that the numbers are important, but what is also important is the world has confidence in India's role in the new AI age.
The minister said the summit saw strong endorsement from participants on India's policy of working on all five layers of the AI stack, and the sovereign bouquet of AI models were lauded by captains of the global tech industry.
"They are really surprised at the quality of output with such few resources... with such frugal resources, our engineers and researchers have produced such good models, which is what gives huge, huge endorsement to our efforts," the minister said.
Global majors like NVIDIA and OpenAI announced a string of partnerships with Indian companies. L&T and NVIDIA are teaming up to build gigawatt-scale AI factory, while Tata Group and TCS are partnering with OpenAI for AI-led solutions.
Meanwhile, Indian startup Sarvam AI said it has trained a 30-billion-parameter model and a 105-billion-parameter model from scratch, using a mixture-of-experts architecture to balance scale and efficiency.
Saturday will mark laying of foundation for the next semiconductor plant in Uttar Pradesh, the minister said, informing that February 28 will see the start of commercial production from the Micron facility.
"That will be one of the largest facilities that Micron has... practically more than 10 cricket fields kind-of-facility, it is very large, and that is going to be inaugurated on February 28," he said, terming these are strong building blocks, the foundation being put in place for ‘Vikasit Bharat'.
He said the government has taken an internal target of about 20 lakh persons to be trained on AI, as part of India AI Mission 2.0 which is on the anvil.
(With inputs from PTI)