New Delhi, Feb 17 (.) union Minister for Electronics & Information Technology, Ashwini Vaishnaw, on Tuesday announced that India will scale its compute capacity beyond the existing 38,000 GPUs with the addition of 20,000 GPUs in the coming weeks.
While speaking at the second day of the India AI Impact Summit 2026, Vaishnaw 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 also shared his optimism regarding the investment opportunity, stating that over the next two years, more than USD 200 billion worth of investment is likely to come.
The minister 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, and added that venture capital firms and other players are committing funds for large solutions and major applications.
“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.
Referring to energy capacity, the Minister 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. He 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.
Regarding chip development, the Minister reaffirmed India’s commitment to the Semiconductor Mission, emphasising that design will be the primary focus in Semiconductor 2.0. He projected that at least 50 deep-tech startups are expected to emerge from India in the coming years, driven by current innovation and development efforts.
Addressing sustainability, the Minister highlighted investments in clean energy to power AI data centres and ongoing research to reduce power and water consumption. Emerging innovations indicate the potential to reduce AI infrastructure energy use by up to 35 percent. . VK SAS .