India has launched the Indian AI Research Organisation (IAIRO), marking a strategic shift from AI policy formulation to sovereign execution. Designed as an execution-first national institution, IAIRO aims to build India-owned AI intellectual property, talent, and deployable systems aligned with national priorities.
From Strategy to Execution in India’s AI Agenda
India’s artificial intelligence ambitions are entering a new phase with the formal launch of the Indian AI Research Organisation (IAIRO), a national institution focused on translating AI strategy into sovereign capability. Announced in New Delhi on January 30, 2026, IAIRO is positioned as the execution engine for India’s AI roadmap, moving beyond vision documents toward deployable systems, intellectual property, and global-scale products rooted in Indian priorities.
The launch is backed by a position paper titled “Sovereign AI for India’s Strategic Autonomy” authored by Amit Sheth, Founding Director of IAIRO, outlining why India must invest in institution-led AI execution rather than relying on externally controlled platforms or commoditised consumer models.
A Sovereign Alternative to Monolithic AI Models
IAIRO’s research direction deliberately departs from large, general-purpose consumer AI models. Instead, the organisation will focus on next-generation AI systems that are domain-specific, compact, and neurosymbolic, combining data-driven learning with explicit knowledge and human expertise. These models will operate within composite frameworks using hybrid agents, making them significantly more cost-effective to train and deploy while being better suited for mission-critical enterprise and public-sector applications.
This approach aligns with India’s broader policy thinking under the IndiaAI Mission, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), and the Gujarat AI Action Plan. It also reflects recent comments by Ashwini Vaishnaw at the World Economic Forum, where he emphasised the need for India to chart its own path through small and specialised language models rather than resource-intensive, general-purpose systems.
Building an ISRO-Style Institution for AI
IAIRO is explicitly modelled on the concentrated national capability that Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) created for space. The goal is to replicate that success for artificial intelligence by bringing together frontier research, talent retention, startup creation, and investor participation under a single institutional mandate. The organisation is designed to ensure that AI ideas progress from research labs to real-world deployment at population scale, rather than remaining as academic prototypes.
Headquartered in GIFT City, IAIRO operates as a public–private partnership, integrating applied research labs, entrepreneur-in-residence programmes, and venture-creation pathways. This “breakthrough to breakout” model is intended to shorten the cycle between discovery, productisation, and national impact across governance, healthcare, climate resilience, language inclusion, digital public infrastructure, and strategic sectors.
Leadership, Governance, and Global Expertise
IAIRO’s governance structure brings together senior figures from academia, industry, and government. Its board includes Ajai Choudhry, Chairman of the Mission Governing Board of the National Quantum Mission, Rajat Moona, Director of IIT Gandhinagar, and P Bharati, Secretary of the Department of Science and Technology, Government of Gujarat. Approved board expansion will add Sharad Sharma, Abhishek Singh, and Ramesh Jain.
The founding team and advisory network spans leading global institutions and companies, including contributors from IBM, Google, DeepMind, OpenAI, Apple, and Amazon, reinforcing IAIRO’s ambition to operate at global research standards while remaining nationally anchored.
A Mission-Mode Moment for Indian AI
Dr. Sheth, who spent more than four decades in the United States building research institutions, mentoring doctoral talent, and commercialising AI research, described IAIRO as India’s long-term execution engine. He framed the moment as a clear inflection point where AI moves from exploration to mission mode, requiring dedicated institutions, sustained capital, and translational capability. His return to India follows Narendra Modi’s call for nation-building through technology leadership.
As India prepares to host the AI Impact Summit, the launch of IAIRO signals a broader national intent to pair ambition with institution-building and innovation with sovereignty. Rather than competing head-on in the race for consumer AI dominance, India is positioning itself to define a parallel model—one focused on strategic autonomy, deployable intelligence, and population-scale outcomes—shaping its own AI destiny on its own terms.
About IAIRO
The Indian AI Research Organisation (IAIRO) is a national institution dedicated to foundational and applied AI research. Operating under a public–private partnership model and headquartered in GIFT City, Gujarat, IAIRO focuses on research excellence, talent development, ecosystem building, and the creation of sovereign AI systems of national and global relevance.
