Hyderabad: The Telangana government on Thursday announced the launch of its flagship autonomous AI innovation unit Aikam, on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, which is being positioned as a “global proving ground” to deploy artificial intelligence (AI) on a large scale.AICAM has been designed with an aim to position Telangana among the top 20 AI innovation hubs in the world with capabilities that include large-scale upskilling to create an AI-ready workforce, support for AI-first startups and deep collaboration between academia, research institutions and industry, the Telangana government said at the rollout of the innovative entity, which was officiated by Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy.The Telangana government said the key driver of AICAM is to emphasize deep, symbiotic collaboration across global enterprises, research institutions and academia, which will enable it to serve as a truly global, integrated AI innovation entity.“Telangana believes in implementation, not experimentation,” CM Revanth Reddy said at the launch of Aikam.The CM said, “Aikam institutionalizes our execution-first approach by aggregating existing and upcoming initiatives under a unified global entity. As the world moves from AI pilots to large-scale deployment, we invite global partners to establish their proving ground in Telangana – where AI is deployed responsibly, operated transparently and scaled with trust.”Telangana plans to support the framework with population-level datasets, efficient compute infrastructure and a dedicated AI fund-of-funds, with IT and Industry Minister Dudila Sridhar Babu describing the initiative as a mechanism to move from concept to deployment while maintaining public trust.The state also launched the first edition of the Responsible AI Standards and Ethics (RAISE) Index on the occasion, a quantitative framework to translate responsible AI principles into measurable standards across the AI lifecycle.“We are at a juncture where AI is reshaping economies at an unprecedented pace. Ikam enables a clear execution pathway – from ideas to globally scalable solutions. Its autonomous structure, housed within the Government of Telangana, allows us to move at pace while maintaining public trust, enabling the adoption of responsible AI at population scale,” he explained.Stating that Telangana with Aikam is uniquely positioned to take AI to practice at scale. Phani Nagarjuna, Founding CEO of Aecom, said it brings together global leadership with deep talent density, strong institutional capacity, robust infrastructure and a clear bias for execution.On the occasion, several strategic memorandums of understanding (MoUs) were also signed with international players in skills, computing, applied research and design-based deployment, which Nagarjuna described as the first building blocks of a long-term vision to bring together global partners into an ecosystem designed to translate bold ideas into reliable, scalable solutions that can make an impact around the world.The MoUs signed include an MoU with UK-based education giant Pearson, which plans to set up a globally benchmark AI academy for world-class skills and credentials with Aikum.Dubai Multi Commodities Center (DMCC) also signed an agreement to activate a high-impact, cross-border startup corridor between Telangana and Dubai, while Blaze Inc. eyes setting up an advanced R&D center focused on highly efficient, deployment-ready AI computing.This also comes as the MedStar-Georgetown Collaborative Center’s AI CoLab signed an MoU to accelerate frontier applied research in healthcare and life sciences and Journey said it intends to lead a global center of excellence for AI-powered design and immersive digital experiences.Telangana special chief secretary Sanjay Kumar said the agreements signed in Davos were aimed at creating an environment for an external ecosystem. “AICOM is being built from the ground up as a global institution and the MoUs signed in Davos represent our first concrete steps towards establishing an ecosystem that is global, execution-focused in design and based on collaboration. Telangana believes that meaningful AI leadership is built by working with the world, not apart from it,” he said.A panel discussion on ‘Responsible Autonomy: Guardrails for the Age of Agent AI’ was also organized on the occasion.
