CHENNAI: The Tamil Nadu government has set aside Rs 50 crore for startups this financial year as it courts international game studios and AI companies, betting that animation, visual effects, gaming and comics (AVGC) can help drive its goal of a $1.5 trillion economy, according to R Kumar, the state’s minister for artificial intelligence.
Speaking at the 18th edition of India Game Developer Conference organised by the Game Developer Association of India, Kumar said the sector’s value lay well beyond entertainment. TN, he said, intended “not merely to follow technology” but to create it, build its own intellectual property and export it.
The benefits should reach cities like Coimbatore and Madurai rather than concentrate in Chennai, with tier-two and tier-three cities plugged into the state’s manufacturing, electronics, automobile and IT services base, he added.
Further, the minister said AI engineering, game development, virtual production and cybersecurity would create new openings, and that automation would free artists and designers to concentrate on originality. New jobs, he cautioned, “will not automatically reach everyone”; they would instead require skills, investment and responsible implementation.
AI factory in the works
CHENNAI: Larsen & Toubro (L&T) is building a planned gigawatt-scale “AI Factory” campus in Chennai, with its Vyoma.AI arm on Wednesday holding a bhoomi pooja to begin construction of a 52 MW data centre at the site. The campus already includes an operational 30 MW facility hosting advanced AI compute clusters. The new facility is designed for high-density AI workloads and will use direct-to-chip liquid cooling, a release stated.