India: technology profile

AI

Shared public computing capacity at subsidized rates is a core part of India's AI program. The Union Cabinet approved the IndiaAI Mission in March 2024 with an outlay of Rs 10,371.92 crore (one crore is 10 million). It has seven components, including compute capacity, homegrown models, skills, startup financing and safe and trusted AI. It is implemented by the IndiaAI Independent Business Division under Digital India Corporation. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) reports on it to Parliament.

The original compute goal was 10,000 or more graphics processing units (GPUs), the chips used to train and run AI models. On February 13, 2026, Minister of State Jitin Prasada told the Rajya Sabha that more than 38,000 GPUs had been onboarded to a common facility. He said 12 organizations and consortia, including Sarvam AI and the IIT Bombay-led BharatGen, had been shortlisted to build foundation models trained on Indian languages and datasets. Official details released on February 10, 2026 put the subsidized rate for those GPUs at Rs 65 per hour.

MeitY released the India AI Governance Guidelines on November 5, 2025. They set out seven guiding principles. MeitY Secretary S. Krishnan said the approach is to rely on existing laws where it can. India also hosted the AI Impact Summit in New Delhi. It closed on February 21, 2026 with a declaration endorsed by 88 countries and international organizations.

Google said in October 2025 that it would invest approximately $15 billion over 2026 to 2030 in an AI hub in Visakhapatnam. That is a company pledge, not money already spent.

Chips and hardware

The India Semiconductor Mission (ISM), under MeitY, is the nodal agency for the government's semiconductor and display schemes. A government backgrounder from September 2026 says the first phase, Semicon 1.0, was approved in December 2021 with an outlay of Rs 76,000 crore. It says this has led to 12 approved manufacturing units with cumulative investment of more than Rs 1.64 lakh crore (one lakh crore is one trillion):

• one silicon fabrication plant (fab)
• one silicon carbide fab
• one micro-LED display fab
• nine assembly, testing and packaging units

Five had started commercial production. The ISM timeline dates commercial production at Micron's facility in Sanand, Gujarat, to February 2026 and at Kaynes Semicon's plant there to March 2026.

On July 15, 2026 the Cabinet approved Semicon 2.0 with an outlay of Rs 1,27,500 crore. The backgrounder says it extends support beyond fabs and packaging to chip design, machines and materials, research and talent. It says India employs nearly 20% of the world's chip design workforce, a government figure.

Space

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) soft-landed Chandrayaan-3 on the Moon on August 23, 2023. It has since docked two satellites in orbit under its SPADEX mission, repeating the maneuver with full autonomy on April 20, 2025. It launched the NASA-ISRO NISAR radar satellite on July 30, 2025. The government told Parliament on August 5, 2026 that:

• the first uncrewed Gaganyaan test flight is scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2026
• the first crewed mission is targeted for 2027
• a national space station, the Bharatiya Antariksh Station, is planned to be operational by 2035

Energy technology

A PIB backgrounder put installed data center capacity at 1.57 GW as of August 2026, up from about 375 MW in 2020. It presents nuclear power as one source of supply. Parliament passed the SHANTI Bill in December 2025. Minister of State Jitendra Singh said it consolidates provisions of existing atomic energy and nuclear liability laws and gives the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board statutory status. A March 2026 reply to Parliament set out a government roadmap. It aims to raise nuclear capacity from 8.78 GW to about 22 GW by 2031-32 and 100 GW by 2047. The same reply says Rs 20,000 crore has been provided for small modular reactors under a mission announced in the Union Budget 2025-26.

What to watch

As of October 2026, several questions remain open:

• Chips: how quickly the seven approved units not yet in commercial production come online.
• Space: whether the uncrewed Gaganyaan flight happens in the fourth quarter of 2026 as scheduled.
• Energy: how the new nuclear law is implemented and whether small modular reactor projects receive final approvals.
• AI infrastructure: how much announced data center investment is built. The PIB backgrounder cites nearly USD 70 billion under way and a further USD 90 billion in announced projects.