He noted the commitment of venture capital firms to deep-tech startups and stated that investments are coming across all five layers of the AI stack.
The Minister added that venture capital firms and other players are committing funds for large solutions and major applications.
On the second day of the India AI Impact Summit 2026, Vaishnaw said that India will scale its compute capacity beyond the existing 38,000 Graphic Processing Units (GPUs) with the addition of 20,000 GPUs in the coming weeks. He highlighted that this marks the next phase of India’s AI strategy, with a significant expansion of compute infrastructure and a focus on responsible AI deployment.
He reiterated that the focus remains on responsible AI development and wider deployment across sectors such as healthcare and education to ensure that AI benefits all.
Unlike many other countries where AI infrastructure is controlled by a few companies, India has provided AI compute access to a wide section of its population, Vaishnaw said.
The IT industry is one of India’s biggest strengths and that every technology transition must be managed jointly by industry, academia, and government. Work is currently underway on three fronts: reskilling and upskilling the existing workforce, creating a new talent pipeline, and ensuring that future generations are prepared for emerging technologies. All three efforts are progressing in parallel, he said.
He Minister further said that the Future Skills programme, launched three years ago, is now being deployed for AI-based reskilling.
The Ministry of Education and AICTE are working on revising course curricula to ensure that the talent pipeline remains updated and that youth are equipped with new opportunities, he said.
Vaishnaw noted that India is among the rare countries where more than 50 percent of power generation capacity comes from clean sources, currently about 51 percent, which provides a significant advantage for the country.
