Karnataka IT minister Priyank Kharge on Saturday met Irina Ghose, managing director of Anthropic India, to discuss the state's AI vision and opportunities for strategic collaboration. The discussions focused on building advanced, future-ready AI skillsets and forging partnerships for skilling and co-creation. According to a statement from the minister's office, the two sides also deliberated on establishing Centres of Excellence and incubators to strengthen AI research, innovation and entrepreneurship in the state. A key focus was leveraging existing datasets for public good and strengthening citizen services through AI. The discussions also explored Karnataka's transition from e-governance to i-governance (intelligence-driven governance) by harnessing AI. The meeting explored opportunities to design sustainable and scalable AI programmes for the government and citizens, while strengthening collaboration between startups and global capability centres (GCC) through mentorship, co-creation and greater engagement with Karnataka's existing deep-tech startup ecosystem.