The Union Government is likely to push for the adoption of indigenously developed artificial intelligence (AI) models and agents in critical sectors, including defence and aerospace. This could involve asking critical government departments at both the central and state levels to avoid using frontier AI models and agents developed by non-Indian companies. Senior government officials reportedly told Business Standard that the government is also asking departments to review how indigenous AI systems can be deployed in these sectors.

One official told the publication, “The idea is to have enough technological capability to use these models in crucial sectors. We are in constant talks with all the companies (who won bids to develop indigenous AI models) to see if we can expand the scope of the models they have built so far.” The official added that some domestic models developed so far had achieved up to 80 per cent of the capacity of leading frontier AI models.

Models under the IndiaAI Mission: The government has identified and approved the development of 20 AI models, including general-purpose large language models (LLMs) and sector-specific small language models (SLMs). These models are being developed by 12 startups selected under the mission. Among them, Sarvam and BharatGen have released several AI models.

Other released models include the video-generation model Varya, Soket’s EKA-1 foundation model, and ZenteiQ’s Dhir 2B and Dhir 5B. Meanwhile, companies such as Gnani, Gan AI, Fractal, Tech Mahindra and Shodh AI are working to release their LLMs and SLMs over the next 12–15 months, the official told the publication. The government is also in talks with selected companies to expand the capabilities and scope of the models developed so far.

IndiaAI Mission has released a fraction of its approved funds: Although the IndiaAI Mission has a five-year outlay of Rs 10,371.92 crore over five years, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) revealed in a Rajya Sabha reply that it has released only a fraction of the approved funds. As of April 2026, the government had released Rs 21.79 crore in 2024–25 against revised estimates of Rs 173 crore, and Rs 379.15 crore in 2025–26 against revised estimates of Rs 800 crore. Furthermore, it had not released any funds for 2026–27 against the budget estimate of Rs 1,000 crore.

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