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Union IT and Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Thursday announced that the central government will develop more than 500 data labs under the IndiaAI Mission to strengthen talent and infrastructure in artificial intelligence (AI).He was speaking at the pre-event of the AI Impact Summit 2026, to be hosted by India. The summit will be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and will see the participation of multiple heads of state. Vaishnaw said the government is making significant investments in AI, with teams working on both large-scale and problem-solving models.He emphasised that the aim is to make technology accessible to all and to share India’s advancements with the world. The minister added that AI will improve lives across sectors, from farmers to entrepreneurs, while skill development will remain a key focus. As part of the mission, the government will also introduce an AI governance framework by September.

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The AI Impact Summit 2026 will highlight India’s approach to building inclusive technology and sharing it with the world. Vaishnaw said skill development will be a core focus, alongside establishing 500+ AI labs and unveiling an AI governance framework by September 2026.

As part of the broader IndiaAI Mission, the government has selected eight new players to develop large language models (LLMs). Among them are Tech Mahindra, Fractal Analytics, and BharatGen --an IIT Bombay Consortium.

The LLM proposed by IIT Bombay is expected to have 1 trillion parameters, with the project receiving Rs 988.6 crore in financial assistance under the mission. Parameters in an LLM represent the learned internal variables that capture language patterns from massive datasets.

Also Read:First Made-In-India semiconductor chip to roll out soon from Sanand's CG plant: Ashwini Vaishnaw

Earlier this week, Vaishnaw launched the AI for Viksit Bharat Roadmap: The Opportunity for Accelerated Economic Growth and the NITI Frontier Tech Repository, highlighting AI’s transformative potential.

“Over a period of the last few decades, the biggest change which has happened and the biggest factor which has joined this constellation of technologies is AI because AI is now affecting practically everything that we do. Like the Internet, which changed everything that we did, AI is also going to fundamentally change the way we work, the way we live, the way we consume... That's why it's very important to make sure that we are frontrunners in AI technologies,” Vaishnaw said.

The minister underlined that no country can aspire to become developed without achieving mastery in core technologies.

"These technologies are telecom technology, semiconductors, electric vehicles, biotech, some of the most complex engines, quantum, rare earth, and a few more. These are technologies which we will have to master, we'll have to adopt, we'll have to develop talent pipeline, and we will have to make sure that we remain in the frontier," he had said.

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