Union Budget 2025: FM Sitharaman announces ₹500 crore AI centre of excellence in education

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Saturday announced the setting up of a new centre of excellence in artificial intelligence (AI) for education, with an outlay of ₹500 crore, in her Union Budget speech 2025-2026. 

During her budget speech, Sitharaman said, “I had announced three centres of excellence in artificial intelligence for agriculture, health and sustainable cities in 2023. Now, a centre of excellence in artificial intelligence for education will be setup with a total outlay of ₹500 crore."

Just a day earlier, in the Economic Survey, the Finance Minister highlighted the importance of incorporating AI and machine learning (ML) in higher education to improve learning outcomes and employability.

In addition to building an AI centre of excellence, the Indian government had recently announced plans to enter the global AI race by developing basic AI models similar to DeepSeek's R1 and OpenAI's ChatGPT.

“The foundational models made in India will be able to compete with the best of the best in the world… With algorithmic efficiency, we can create these models in a much shorter time frame. We will have a world-class foundational AI model in just a few months,” Union Electronics and Information Technology minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said at a press briefing on Thursday.

FM proposes increasing capacity of IITs, medical colleges:

FM Sitharaman also noted that the total number of students in IITs has doubled from 65,000 to 1.35 lakh over the past decade and that additional infrastructure will be created to accommodate 6,500 more students in IITs established after 2014 in the coming year.

“The capacity of IITs will be expanded. The total number of students in the 23 IITs has increased by 100%, from 65,000 to 1.35 lakh in the past 10 years. Additional infrastructure will be created in the five IITs established after 2014 to accommodate 6,500 more students. The hostel and other infrastructure capacity at IIT Patna will also be expanded," Sitharaman added.

The Finance Minister also announced the government's intention to create an additional 10,000 seats in medical colleges and hospitals in the coming year, with the aim of creating an additional 75,000 seats over the next five years.