Indian Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw addresses a press conference during AI-Summit in New Delhi, India on Feb 17. (AP)
NEW DELHI, Feb 17, (AP): India is hoping to garner as much as $200 billion in investments for data centers over the next few years as it scales up its ambitions to become a hub for artificial intelligence, the country’s minister for electronics and information technology said Tuesday. The investments underscore the reliance of tech titans on India as a key technology and talent base in the global race for AI dominance.
For New Delhi, they bring in high-value infrastructure and foreign capital at a scale that can accelerate its digital transformation ambitions. The push comes as governments worldwide race to harness AI’s economic potential while grappling with job disruption, regulation and the growing concentration of computing power in a few rich countries and companies.
“Today, India is being seen as a trusted AI partner to the Global South nations seeking open, affordable and development-focused solutions,” Ashwini Vaishnaw told The Associated Press in an email interview, as New Delhi hosts a major AI Impact Summit this week drawing participation from at least 20 global leaders and a who’s who of the tech industry.
In October, Google announced a $15 billion investment plan in India over the next five years to establish its first artificial intelligence hub in the South Asian country. Microsoft followed two months later with its biggest-ever Asia investment announcement of $17.5 billion to advance India’s cloud and artificial intelligence infrastructure over the next four years.
Amazon too has committed $35 billion investment in India by 2030 to expand its business, specifically targeting AI-driven digitization. The cumulative investments are part of $200 billion in investments that are in the pipeline and New Delhi hopes would flow in. Vaishnaw said India’s pitch is that artificial intelligence must deliver measurable impacts at scale rather than remain an elite technology.
“A trusted AI ecosystem will attract investment and accelerate adoption,” he said, adding that a central pillar of India’s strategy to capitalize on the use of AI is building infrastructure. The government recently announced a long-term tax holiday for data centers as it hopes to provide policy certainty and attract global capital.
Vaishnaw said the government has already operationalized a shared computing facility with more than 38,000 graphics processing units, or GPUs, allowing startups, researchers and public institutions to access high-end computing without heavy upfront costs. “AI must not become exclusive. It must remain widely accessible,” he said. Alongside the infrastructure drive, India is backing the development of sovereign foundational AI models trained on Indian languages and local contexts. Some of these models meet global benchmarks and in certain tasks rival widely used large language models, Vaishnaw said.
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