Government Releases ₹276 Crore for 4 AI Centres of Excellence at IITs and IISc

The Government of India has disbursed ₹276 crore to establish and strengthen 4 national Artificial Intelligence Centres of Excellence (AI CoEs) at IIT Kanpur, IIT Ropar, IISc Bengaluru, and IIT Madras, as part of its broader vision to build an indigenous AI ecosystem under the IndiaAI Mission.

The initiative supports the government’s vision of “Make AI in India, Make AI Work for India,” with the four Centres of Excellence focusing on Sustainable Cities, Agriculture, Healthcare, and Education, respectively.

According to the Ministry of Education, IIT Kanpur has received ₹74.39 crore, IISc Bengaluru ₹69.07 crore, IIT Ropar ₹62.64 crore, and IIT Madras ₹43 crore. In addition, ₹27 crore had been released earlier during the pilot phase between 2023 and 2025 to support the selection and initial development of the institutions.

The four centres have a combined approved outlay of ₹1,490 crore, comprising ₹990 crore for the Healthcare, Agriculture, and Sustainable Cities CoEs, along with ₹500 crore allocated for the Education AI Centre of Excellence announced in the Union Budget 2025–26.

The institutions are already developing AI applications across critical sectors. IIT Kanpur is working on AI models for air pollution attribution, urban flood prediction, and smart city management. IISc Bengaluru is developing AI tools for the early detection of diseases such as oral cancer, breast cancer, diabetic retinopathy, and diabetes. IIT Ropar is building AI-powered solutions for crop, pest, and disease identification to support precision agriculture, while IIT Madras is developing Indic AI technologies, including automatic speech recognition (ASR), optical character recognition (OCR), machine translation, and text-to-speech systems.

The Ministry of Education said progress is being monitored through a multi-layered governance framework involving periodic reviews by industry leaders, independent project monitoring committees, and external domain experts to ensure effective implementation and measurable outcomes.

The initiative forms a key pillar of the ₹10,371.92 crore IndiaAI Mission, which aims to expand AI computing infrastructure, support AI startups, develop indigenous foundation models, strengthen AI datasets, and accelerate AI adoption across sectors.

Separately, the Ministry of Education said it has established 58 AI Centres of Excellence in Higher Education across states and Union Territories, operationalised 27 India Data and AI Labs with another 188 under development, identified 762 AI use cases across 62 ministries and departments, and awarded 686 AI fellowships across 178 institutions, reflecting the government’s broader push to strengthen India’s AI research, talent, and innovation ecosystem.

Overall, the funding marks another step in India’s effort to build sovereign AI capabilities by combining academic research, industry collaboration, and public investment to develop AI technologies tailored to national priorities across healthcare, agriculture, education, and urban infrastructure.