Signal India approves 12 semiconductor manufacturing projects worth ~$17.2B; IndiaAI Mission builds 45,000+ GPU compute centers

Summary

The Indian government approved 12 semiconductor manufacturing projects worth approximately $17.2 billion (about Rs 1.64 lakh crore) under the India Semiconductor Mission, comprising one fabrication unit, two compound semiconductor units and nine packaging and test units. On the design side, 24 projects are supported under the Design Linked Incentive Scheme, 105 companies have received assistance with advanced chip-design tools, and 23 design tapeouts have been completed, including at advanced nodes. A newly announced India Semiconductor Mission 2.0, unveiled in the Union Budget 2026-27, is intended to build out equipment, materials, indigenous intellectual property and supply-chain resilience. The IndiaAI Mission, backed by a budget of roughly $1 billion (Rs 10,372 crore), is building a shared compute facility of more than 45,000 GPUs, supporting 15 large and small language models and an AI Kosh repository holding 12,500 datasets, 307 AI models and 20 toolkits. Twenty-seven Data and AI Labs have been set up across Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities, and 684 fellowships have been awarded to students, as India's electronics manufacturing sector grows to roughly $136.4 billion, its third-largest export category.