AI Mission 2.0 will have huge focus on R&D, innovation and AI diffusion: Ashwini Vaishnaw

Speaking at the India AI Impact Summit, the Union Minister for Information & Broadcasting said he the government is set to add another 20,000 GPUs soon

by e4m Staff
Published: Feb 17, 2026 4:04 PM | 1 min read

AI Mission 2.0 will sharply scale up India’s shared AI computing capacity, with the government set to add another 20,000 GPUs (Graphics Processing Units), Union Minister for Information & Broadcasting Ashwini Vaishnaw said at a press conference during the India AI Impact Summit.

Vaishnaw said AI Mission 2.0 will place a “huge focus” on research and development, innovation, AI diffusion, and further strengthening the common compute infrastructure built under AI Mission 1.0.

Calling India’s approach a key differentiator, the minister said the government has followed the Prime Minister’s vision of democratising technology by ensuring AI compute is accessible to a very large section of the population, unlike several other countries where AI infrastructure remains controlled by a handful of companies. He added that India’s model mirrors the country’s digital public infrastructure approach, which has helped take technology to vast sections of society.

The minister said the government will place orders for the additional 20,000 GPUs within the next week, and the deployment will be completed within the next six months. He said the continuous expansion is aimed at providing high-quality compute resources to startups, researchers and students, reiterating that the government is focused on making technology accessible to the entire user base.