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Google announced a financial commitment of USD 8 million to support India’s government-backed Artificial Intelligence (AI) Centres of Excellence. The funding, routed through Google.org, will support applied AI research in critical areas, including healthcare, language translation, and sustainable energy solutions. The announcement, made at the company's "Lab to Impact" dialogue, aligns with the national goal to "Make AI in India and Make AI work for India."
Funding focuses on four key areas
The USD 8 million grant will directly fund research at four specific AI Centres of Excellence across the country, each tackling a pressing societal challenge:
TANUH (IISc Bengaluru): Focuses on developing scalable AI solutions for the effective treatment of non-communicable diseases.
Airawat Research Foundation (IIT Kanpur): Pioneers research on using AI to transform urban governance and city management.
AI Centre of Excellence for Education (IIT Madras): Develops solutions to enhance learning and teaching outcomes.
ANNAM.AI (IIT Ropar): Concentrates on developing data-driven solutions for agriculture and farmer welfare.
Advancing India-specific healthcare
Healthcare emerged as a major focus for Google's broader collaborations. The company committed an additional USD 400,000 to support the development of India's Health Foundation Model. This model leverages Google’s specialized medical AI framework, MedGemma, to address unique Indian health challenges.
As part of this effort, partners like Ajna Lens will collaborate with experts from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) to build AI tools for specific use cases, such as dermatology and Outpatient Department (OPD) triaging. Clinicians involved in the project noted that global AI models often lack necessary data on South Asian skin tones, making the local development of AI for conditions like eczema and leprosy crucial.
Google is also working with the National Health Authority (NHA) to apply AI to India’s digital public infrastructure. This includes converting millions of unstructured medical records, like doctor's clinical notes, into the machine-readable FHIR standard. The company also helps the NHA list over 400,000 registered health facilities on Google Maps and Search, making official health information more accessible to the public.
Supporting Indic languages and startups
To address India's extensive linguistic diversity, Google made a USD 2 million founding contribution to establish the Indic Language Technologies Research Hub at IIT Bombay. This hub aims to ensure that global AI advancements are effectively adapted for India’s numerous languages.
In parallel, Google.org is supporting the wider AI ecosystem. The philanthropic arm committed USD 4.5 million to Wadhwani AI to develop multilingual AI applications for health and agriculture, including the conversational AI assistant HealthVaani for frontline health workers. Furthermore, Indian startups focused on Indic language solutions, such as Gnani.AI, CoRover.AI, and BharatGen, will receive grants of USD 50,000 each to build local language models.
AI powered by Clean Energy
The company also addressed the need for sustainable AI growth by announcing a partnership with ReNew Energy to support a new 150 megawatt (MW) solar project in Rajasthan. The agreement will provide Google with environmental attribute certificates (EACs), helping the company offset emissions from its value chain and power its AI operations with clean energy. This builds on previous collaborations that have already added 186 MW of wind and solar power to India’s grid.
This comprehensive set of funding and partnerships demonstrates Google’s strategy to embed its AI technology into the core of India’s public services and research efforts, spanning from clinical practice to farmer support and urban planning.