Amitabh Kant: Govt will acquire 10,000 GPUs within 18 months to bolster AI development

The government will bolster the nation's computational infrastructure by acquiring 10,000 graphics processing units (GPUs) within the next 18 months, former Niti Ayog CEO and India's G20 Sherpa Amitabh Kant said.

A recent report from CBRE South Asia Pvt Ltd found that India has emerged as the leading country in the Asia Pacific region (excluding China) for data centre capacity, with a capacity of 950 MW, surpassing other major nations such as Australia, Hong Kong SAR, Japan, Singapore and Korea.

The report also forecasts that India will add 850 MW of data centre capacity between 2024 and 2026, the highest increase in the region.

Data centres are large groups of networked servers, which are used for remote data storage and distribution.

According to a March report by CareEdge Ratings, India's data centre industry is expected to double its capacity from approximately 0.9 GW in 2023 to 2 GW by 2026.

This growth is projected to require an estimated capital expenditure of Rs 50,000 crore over the next three years. 

India now has over 100 generative AI startups, however, the investment into the space has been comparatively small. 

The US saw nearly $250 billion in private investments into AI startups between 2013 and 2022, while investments in India stood at just $8 billion. 

Over the same period, China saw $95 billion of investments while for the UK, the number stood at $18 billion, as per data from the AI Index 2023 Annual Report.