CHENNAI: The Tamil Nadu government on Tuesday signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Sarvam AI to establish India’s first full-stack Sovereign AI Park, aimed at attracting investments of around Rs 10,000 crore over a five-year period.
The project is expected to generate about 1,000 high-skilled deep-tech jobs and is seen as a foundational step towards building a robust and inclusive artificial intelligence ecosystem rooted in public interest.
The MoU was exchanged in the presence of Chief Minister MK Stalin, Industries Minister TRB Rajaa, Industries secretary Arun Roy, and IIT Madras Director V Kamakoti. The project includes the establishment of data centres exclusively to host government data.
The Sovereign AI Park will be a first-of-its-kind, purpose-built district in India integrating AI compute infrastructure, secure data frameworks, model research laboratories and AI innovation clusters, along with a dedicated institute for AI in governance. To come up near the IIT Research Park in Taramani, it will function as a full-stack system in which data, models and compute capabilities remain within the State’s trust boundary, ensuring a sovereign, ethical and inclusive ecosystem for the deployment of AI systems.
Speaking to reporters at the Secretariat, minister Rajaa said the initiative would set a precedent for other states. With large capacity being created in the data centres, he said, other states could also host their data in Tamil Nadu.
He added that the initiative would position Tamil Nadu as a national leader in the large-scale deployment of AI, with implementation across key sectors such as education, agriculture, healthcare and citizen engagement.
Kamakoti said artificial intelligence would define the next generation of jobs just as manufacturing and information technology defined the previous one. By anchoring sovereign AI infrastructure and frontier research in Tamil Nadu, he said, students and researchers from the State would be empowered to become global creators of AI rather than mere consumers.
The initiative, he added, aimed to convert Tamil Nadu’s talent strength into long-term economic leadership.
The Sovereign AI Park will be a first-of-its-kind, purpose-built district in India
It will integrate AI compute infrastructure, secure data frameworks, model research laboratories and AI innovation clusters
The project is expected to generate about 1,000 high-skilled deep-tech jobs
It is expected to build a robust and inclusive AI ecosystem rooted in public interest