‘Take AI to the grassroots’: Sharath Kumar Bache Gowda on Karnataka’s affordable ‘AI PC’

As per the latest business developments, Karnataka has built a low-cost "AI PC" priced at around Rs 18,999, aimed at giving schoolchildren access to artificial intelligence at a time when advanced computing hardware is increasingly expensive, stated Hosakote MLA and Karnataka State Electronics Development Corporation Chairman Sharath Kumar Bache Gowda at the Moneycontrol Startup Conclave 2026 in Bengaluru.

"It's not a laptop—it's a really small AI PC," Gowda stated, adding that the objective was to "take AI to the grassroots and make sure that kids growing up in 6th, 7th, or 8th grade get exposure to AI."

Gowda contrasted the device with expensive laptops offering 25, 40 or 50 TOPS (Trillions of Operations Per Second) of AI processing power, which he stated typically cost Rs 1 lakh to Rs 1.5 lakh. He argued that technology as a whole was becoming "undemocratic", pointing to smartphones that once cost Rs 20,000-25,000 with proper specifications but now run into Rs 2 lakh, or Rs 4 lakh for high-end models.

Data centres, he stated, were similarly becoming "the property of massive corporations".

"As technology moves away from the base toward the elite sector, our thought was: how do you take technology back down to the grassroots?" he stated, arguing that grassroots ecosystems were where "true talent" and innovation were found.

Gowda stated the device was built entirely within Karnataka's technology ecosystem.

"From the chip to all the components, they have all been designed and built in Karnataka," he stated, describing this as one of the project's key objectives.

The PC runs on a 4 TOPS AI chip designed by a Bengaluru-based fabless semiconductor firm.

He stated the absence of chip fabrication plants in the state should not be noted as a limitation, since a firm base of fabless design firms was a prerequisite for attracting fabs in the first place.

"We don't want just 5 or 10 fabless firms; we want 50 or 100 fabless design houses to feed these fabs," he stated, describing the initiative as an attempt to energise Karnataka's semiconductor design ecosystem while making computing more accessible and affordable at scale.