A major push to strengthen India’s artificial intelligence ecosystem was announced on Tuesday as Google unveiled fresh funding, research tie ups, and healthcare focused AI initiatives across the country.
The company announced $8 million in funding for 4 AI Centres of Excellence during its Lab to Impact dialogue, held as part of the India AI Impact Summit 2026 in New Delhi. The initiative aims to support research, innovation, and real world applications of AI across key public sectors.
The 4 Centres of Excellence include TANUH at IISc Bengaluru, which focuses on non communicable diseases, the Airawat Research Foundation at IIT Kanpur working on urban governance, the AI Centre of Excellence for Education at IIT Madras, and ANNAM.AI at IIT Ropar, which focuses on agriculture and farmer welfare.
Addressing the event, Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said, “India is approaching AI as a strategic national capability, not as a short term technology trend. The four AI Centres of Excellence have been conceived as a coordinated national research mission, advancing foundational research, responsible AI, and applied solutions that serve public purpose, and contributing to our larger aspiration of Viksit Bharat 2047”.
He also said Google plans to provide a $2 million founding grant to set up the Indic Language Technologies Research Hub at IIT Bombay. The hub will focus on advancing AI solutions for India’s linguistic diversity.
Healthcare focused funding
Google also announced $400,000 in funding to support collaborations using MedGemma to develop AI models aimed at improving healthcare delivery and patient outcomes. As part of this initiative, startup Ajna Lens will work with the All India Institute of Medical Sciences to build India specific AI models for dermatology and patient assessments. Researchers from IISc will also work on broader clinical applications.
“The resulting models will contribute to India’s Digital Public Infrastructure and their outcomes will be made accessible to the ecosystem,” the company said.
Separately, Google said it is working with the National Health Authority to modernise unstructured medical records into international standards to improve data access and reduce documentation burden for hospitals.
Support for language technologies and startups
Google said it will provide $50,000 each to startups Gnani.AI and CoRover.AI, which are developing Indic language voice and governance focused AI models using Gemma. IIT Bombay will also receive a separate $50,000 grant to process Indic language health governance and policy documents to build an India centric trait database covering diseases, phenotypes, and genetic conditions.
In addition, Wadhwani AI will receive $4.5 million to support multilingual AI powered applications for health and agriculture. The announcements follow Google’s earlier commitment in October 2025 to invest $15 billion in building an AI data centre in Andhra Pradesh.
Also read: Viksit Workforce for a Viksit Bharat
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