India builds $200 million AI chip after US restrictions on NVIDIA
India is building its own AI chip to break free from relying on foreign tech giants, especially after US restrictions made NVIDIA's top chips hard to get.
Meity had begun discussions on the project a few months earlier, and in February 2025 India announced it had begun work on an AI chip.
The project has a $200 million budget and is being led by C-Dac, the same team behind India's supercomputers.
India's 2nm RISC-V chip enters trials
This new chip is set to power critical areas like defense, aerospace, and public services while keeping sensitive data secure.
A team of nearly 30 engineers in Bengaluru started work in late 2024, using cutting-edge 2-nanometer technology and open-source RISC-V architecture.
Trial manufacturing began in August 2026, with a production-ready version of the AI chip "some time in 2029, and start deploying it in applications by 2030."
The goal: make India less vulnerable to strategically important chip deployments, data processing, and AI usage, and have a fallback if geopolitical sanctions are applied.