 (3).png)
2 weeks ago
2
ARTICLE AD BOX
India closed 2025 with a surge of activity in artificial intelligence. A dozen government-backed startups began building foundational artificial intelligence models, with one of them raising more than $100 million in funding.
At the same time, data centres saw a massive boom as Big Tech doubled down on India.
Together, these developments raised the expectation for what 2026 holds for AI in India—across innovation, investments, jobs and education. Mint examines what lies ahead for AI in India in the coming year.
Will 2026 see the rollout of India’s own DeepSeek?
In a way, yes. India will host the next global AI summit, scheduled for 15 February in New Delhi. The IT ministry confirmed on Monday that one of the intended goals would be to have at least one government-backed AI entity showcase its foundational AI model by then, as proof that AI trained primarily on non-English language datasets can achieve performance standards comparable to those of global AI systems.
Government insiders have said that at least one such model is nearly ready, and could mark the start of deployment of what has so far been called ‘sovereign’ AI models—algorithms used in generative intelligence that have been fully trained, built and optimized in India.
What about local languages and available data?
Languages and datasets are expected to experience a significant surge in demand next year. Open-source datasets, such as Google’s Project Vaani and Meity’s Bhashini, have opened up access to public data of 22 Indian languages, which any startup or commercial entity can view and use.
A new crop of Indian companies is further seeking to be data brokers by licensing data from publishers that own little-known content in obscure languages. These ‘brokers’ then collate and annotate the data, in turn making these datasets ready to be read by machines. In the coming year, this is expected to lead to a significant shift in the availability of AI data.
Would all this make AI less uncertain for companies in India?
That’s hard to tell. Meity’s proposed labelling of AI content on social media has raised concerns about how creative marketing’s use of AI is impacted.
A proposal by the department for promotion of industry and internal trade (DPIIT) to offer copyright royalties from AI developers is another key point of contention, with discussions about the viability of India’s proposed regulations currently ongoing.
But, with regulations becoming clearer, deals such as Coforge’s acquisition of Encora are a key example of rising enterprise confidence in AI, and more such deals could be on the horizon as well.
Does this mean that data centres will flourish and jobs will perish?
The boom in India-born AI models and Indian datasets, coupled with the rising use of these models, is likely to drive the growth of data centres. This year saw announcements worth over $50 billion made to establish data centres in India, of which on-ground implementations will begin in 2026.
Smaller, homegrown firms are also set to join the party. Jobs, however, are likely to go through uncertainty. Mint reported last week that Infosys, one of India’s largest mass recruiters, will cut back on hiring freshers from engineering colleges. This is one example of how automation will eat into existing jobs, before new ones are created in the coming year.
Can AI replicate the boom that IT services saw 25 years ago?
Most top tech companies, such as Google, Microsoft and OpenAI, have all said on record that India will be one of AI’s biggest markets globally. With enterprise adoption set to surge and more consumers discovering AI applications, an AI boom is expected by experts and analysts alike—akin to how India’s IT services surged a quarter of a century ago.
EY India projected generative AI to yield $438 billion in revenue by 2030—a figure that is likely to surpass IT services’ quest to grow to $400 billion in annual revenue by then. AI thus promises an exponential surge, and 2026 is just the start of it.
English (US) ·