Gujarat to emerge as India’s digital gateway: CM Patel at AI summit

Gandhinagar, Dec 11 (PTI) Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel on Thursday said Gujarat will rise as India’s digital gateway through the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), startups, fintech platforms, and global capability centres.

He was addressing the Regional AI Impact Summit 2025 at Mahatma Mandir in Gandhinagar.

“With fast and robust international connectivity, Gujarat will emerge as India’s digital gateway through the development of AI, ML, startups, fintech platforms, and global capability centres,” he said.

Gujarat will become an important hub for global data traffic and will further strengthen India’s digital independence capability. International investment in cloud services, hyperscale, data centres, and digital platforms will also increase, he added.

In line with the prime minister’s vision, the state government is giving strong emphasis on AI, he said.

“In the coming days, AI, especially AI in governance, will be widely adopted. For this purpose, an AI Task Force has been formed, and a Gujarat Unified Digital Stack is being prepared for all state departments”, said the CM.

The unified digital stack will enable citizens to access all services through a single platform. Patel expressed confidence that the summit will help position AI as a transformational strength in the ‘Viksit Gujarat 2047’ vision and will also play an important role in building ‘Viksit Bharat’.

Under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, AI has become a mission of national progress, he said, adding that Gujarat has always remained a leader in technology-driven development, according to a release.

This regional conference was organised by the state Department of Science and Technology in collaboration with the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) as a pre-event to the AI Impact Summit to be held in India in February 2026, it said.

On this occasion, Patel launched the Gujarat AI Stack, which aims to make governance faster and more citizen-centric, the release said. He also unveiled the Gujarat Cloud Adoption Guidelines 2025, which will facilitate the use of “MeitY-empanelled cloud services and national GPU compute”, it added.

The Gujarat government signed two MoUs -- one with Google and ‘BHASHINI’ for multilingual AI and Gujarati language models and another with GIFT City and Henox for setting up a Cable Landing Station, which will make the state a hub of global digital connectivity and strengthen green data centres, it added.

“Our goal is not ‘human versus machine’ but ‘human WITH machine’, where human imagination has created a partner that can itself imagine. In Gujarat, we are not watching the AI revolution; we are building it. AI is no longer just a field; it is a new energy powering every sector with speed,” said Deputy CM Harsh Sanghavi at the event.

He welcomed investors and AI startups to the state. “Gujarat will be your platform. Gujarat will be your launchpad for the future,” Sanghavi said.

He also highlighted the use of AI in the state in areas like crowd management during religious events, wildlife protection and improving operational efficiency of the Gujarat State Road Transport Corporation.

On the sidelines of the event, MeitY Additional Secretary Abhishek Singh told the media, “In the summit that is going to be held in India in February, experts, CEOs, scientists, industry leaders, and all stakeholders from all major global companies will participate.” “There will be discussions on how we can use AI to benefit people and how we can limit the risks of AI,” he added.

Singh said the PM has stressed that when the whole world comes to India, “we should showcase the technological work happening in the states, especially in Gujarat”.

Gujarat is contributing significantly to India’s technological progress, be it semiconductors, artificial intelligence, or as a hub for startups, he said.

“In the future, AI will play a major role in moving the country towards the goal of a developed India, and we will showcase this at the AI Impact Summit in February to the entire world,” he added. PTI KVM PD NR