Google commits $8M to India’s AI centres of excellence

Google on Tuesday announced funding support of $8 million to India’s AI Centers of Excellence for health, agriculture, education, and sustainable cities, and committed $4,00,000 to support the development of India’s health foundation model.

Google, the architect of AI models including Gemini and Gemma, which are integrated across search, cloud services and enterprise tools, is also supporting Gnani.AI, CoRover.AI and BharatGen with $50,000 grants each to build models serving Indic language use cases.

These commitments build on Google’s multi-year engagement with India’s public digital infrastructure and research ecosystem. Over the past decade, the company has worked with academic institutions, startups and government partners to advance AI research, language technologies and applied use cases in areas such as healthcare, agriculture and education.

Google has increasingly focused on supporting open, locally relevant AI models and datasets, aligned with India’s Digital Public Infrastructure approach and its push for inclusive, population-scale technology deployment.

Google said it is providing $4.5 million in funding to Wadhwani AI to support multilingual AI-powered applications for health and agriculture, according to a release.

The announcements mark a series of new collaborations and funding commitments by Google to strengthen India’s AI ecosystem.

“Google announced funding of $4,00,000 to support new collaborations that will leverage ‘MedGemma’ to build India’s Health Foundation Models,” the company said in a release.

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Such models aim to improve the efficiency of healthcare providers and patient outcomes across India.

Google said Ajna Lens will work with experts from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) to build models supporting India-specific use cases in dermatology and OPD triaging.

The resulting models will contribute to India’s Digital Public Infrastructure and be made accessible to the broader ecosystem.

Additionally, researchers, AI experts and clinicians from IISc will explore the use of AI models for wider clinical applications.

To further its inclusive AI agenda, Google announced a $2 million founding contribution to establish the Indic Language Technologies Research Hub at IIT Bombay, aimed at supporting AI systems that reflect India’s linguistic diversity.

(With additional inputs from PTI)