Google and DeepMind pledge $13M to turbocharge India’s AI

Summary

At an event in New Delhi, Google DeepMind senior director Manish Gupta called artificial intelligence humanity’s “most powerful force for progress” and argued that India is already at the forefront of applying it to real‑world problems. As part of a broader AI push, Google announced USD 8 million in funding for India’s AI Centers of Excellence focused on health, agriculture, education and sustainable cities, plus a further USD 400,000 to support development of an Indian health foundation model built on MedGemma. Additional grants include USD 4.5 million for Wadhwani AI to expand multilingual AI tools in health and agriculture, and USD 50,000 each for startups Gnani.AI, CoRover.AI and BharatGen to build Indic‑language models and assistants. The package reflects a strategy of seeding both top‑down research capacity and bottom‑up startup innovation, rather than betting on a single national model. For India’s AI ecosystem, it’s a notable vote of confidence from one of the world’s main model builders and comes as the country races to convert its data and developer base into durable AI products.