India’s AI aspirations attract multi-billion major technology investments

Amazon and Microsoft are reportedly investing billions in India’s artificial intelligence (AI) efforts.

As the Financial Times (FT) reported on Monday (June 17), India is offering incentives for tech companies to build there, hoping the country’s growing tech market and massive pool of skilled workers will make it a consumer and major exporter of AI.

The report notes that Microsoft has pledged about $3.7 billion to the southern Indian state of Telangana, where it will build data centers that aim to add 660 megawatts of IT capacity — equivalent to the annual electricity needs of about 500,000 households in Europe.

For its part, Amazon plans to invest around $12.7 billion in cloud infrastructure in India by the end of the decade, the report added.

“India today is one of the most exciting markets in the world for technology,” Puneet Chandok, Microsoft’s president for India and South Asia, told the FT.

“The goal is to continuously build capacity in this part of the world to serve clients that are both innovative for India and for the world.”

The FT notes that efforts by tech companies to build their own data centers in India will put the country first in terms of self-built data center capacity.

This follows reports from last month that Microsoft and Amazon had set aside $40 billion for AI infrastructure projects this year alone.

Also in May, chipmaker Nvidia reported that demand for its products is being driven by companies and countries moving from traditional data centers to “AI factories.”

“In the first quarter, we worked with over 100 customers building AI factories ranging in size from hundreds to tens of thousands of GPUs, with some reaching 100,000 GPUs,” said Nvidia Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress. on an earnings call.

Meanwhile, PYMNTS last week examined the popularity of AI among CFOs, with research showing that 63% say the technology has reduced their need for lower-skilled workers, while it may also require new skill sets. Another 58% of CFOs said they need more analytically skilled employees.

“Despite the number of organizations already using AI, we are still at the forefront of the AI ​​revolution,” wrote PYMNTS. “The numerical findings from our report represent an early send-off from that revolution. As AI applications mature, the needs of all companies, large and small, will continue to evolve. However, one thing is clear: we are beginning to see the potential of AI.”