Ashwini Vaishnaw

As the Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology, Ashwini Vaishnaw has been a key driving force behind India’s AI ambitions. He personally championed the Cabinet approval of the IndiaAI Mission on March 7, 2024, with a total financial outlay of ₹10,371.92 crore. A major highlight of the initiative is subsidised AI compute access, reducing costs by up to 40% for eligible users, alongside the creation of a state-of-the-art compute infrastructure with over 18,000 GPUs through public-private partnerships. 

On March 6, 2025, marking the mission’s first anniversary, he launched a suite of key initiatives, including AIKosha (a unified dataset platform), the IndiaAI Compute Portal, an AI Competency Framework for Public Sector Officials, the iGOT Karmayogi, the IndiaAI Startups Global Acceleration Programme, the IndiaAI Application Development Initiative, and the IndiaAI FutureSkills Fellowship.

He announced the establishment of an IndiaAI Safety Institute on January 30, 2025 to ensure ethical and safe application of AI models, and confirmed that an India-specific foundational AI model would be ready in four to 10 months. As Chair of India’s Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI) presidency in 2024, he represented the country at global AI governance forums and has set a goal of positioning India among the top five AI-driven nations.