India Launches National AI Mission: 10,000-GPU Cluster Open for Startups at ₹100/Hour

The Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) has launched the IndiaAI Mission's flagship initiative — a 10,000-GPU AI computing cluster available to Indian startups, researchers, and academic institutions at a subsidized rate of just ₹100 per GPU hour.

The cluster consists of 8,000 NVIDIA H100 GPUs and 2,000 domestic Shakti AI accelerators developed by C-DAC. Located across three data centers in Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Noida, the infrastructure provides 24/7 access through the IndiaAI Compute Portal. The IndiaAI Mission has a total budget of ₹10,372 crore ($1.25 billion) over 5 years. Beyond compute, it includes the IndiaAI Datasets Platform (curated Indian language and domain-specific datasets), IndiaAI Innovation Center (for developing indigenous AI models), and IndiaAI FutureSkills (training 1 million people in AI).

"Democratizing AI compute is the single most important thing we can do for India's AI ecosystem. A startup in Jaipur should have the same access to world-class AI infrastructure as a company in Silicon Valley."

— Ashwini Vaishnaw, Union IT Minister

Priority access is given to startups working on AI solutions in healthcare, agriculture, education, and Indian language technologies. Over 2,000 startups have already registered for access, with 500+ actively training models on the cluster. Early successes include an AI-powered tuberculosis screening tool trained on the cluster that achieved 97% accuracy across 50 rural health centers, and an AI-based crop disease prediction system serving 100,000+ farmers in Maharashtra and Punjab. The IndiaAI Mission positions India as a leader in affordable AI infrastructure. The government aims to expand the cluster to 25,000 GPUs by 2028, making it one of the world's largest publicly funded AI compute facilities.