IIT Kharagpur builds India's first school for 'physical AI' with ₹35 crore (about $3.7 million)

Most AI lives on screens. Physical AI is the kind that has to survive the real world — robots that sense, machines that respond, systems where a mistake has weight and friction. IIT Kharagpur has signed an agreement with alumnus and philanthropist Vinod Gupta and the IITKGP Foundation USA to create the Benjamin Gupta School of Physical AI, described as India's first dedicated academic school for the field, with an investment of ₹35 crore (about $3.7 million): ₹12.5 crore (about $1.3 million) from the Gupta family, ₹10 crore (about $1.05 million) from an anonymous alumnus, and the rest from the institute. The school, named in memory of Vinod Gupta's son Benjamin, will house the Department of Artificial Intelligence and focus on physics-informed machine learning, intelligent robotics, digital twins and AI that is reliable and explainable enough for safety-critical work. Academic programmes are expected to begin in the upcoming session.

SDG 4 · Quality education — Mechanism: funding & finance