Mumbai: In a major development, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on Tuesday said his company plans to invest $3 billion in the country’s artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud infrastructure over the next two years.
Over the past few years, the South Asian country has become a key AI battleground with US tech giants trying to find new customers for their services and explore new talent pools.
In recent months, top officials including Nvidia boss Jensen Huang and Meta’s chief AI scientist Yan Likun have visited India.
On Tuesday, Nadella said the $3 billion investment would include building new data centers.
“India is fast becoming a leader in AI innovation, opening up new opportunities across the country,” Nadella said.
“The investments in infrastructure and skills that we are announcing today reaffirm our commitment to making India AI-first, and will help ensure that people and organizations across the country have a wide range of There will be economies of scale.”
Global acceptance of AI has boosted sales of Microsoft’s key cloud services, which have become the core of its business under Nadella’s leadership.
The announcement comes less than a week after Microsoft president Brad Smith said the company is on track to invest $80 billion in AI this fiscal year.
According to Smith, Microsoft was on pace to invest nearly $80 billion this year to build AI data centers, train AI models and deploy cloud-based applications worldwide.
“The United States is poised to be at the forefront of this new technology wave, especially if it redoubles its power and becomes an effective partner internationally,” he said in an online post. “