Microsoft will invest about $3 billion in expansion capacity for artificial intelligence and its Azure cloud-computing services in India, CEO Satya Nadella said on Tuesday. The tech giant is the latest to pledge investment in India, a country seen as a key growth market for US technology companies thanks to its population of more than 1.4 billion people and low-cost internet access.
Executives ranging from Nvidia chief Jensen Huang to Meta’s chief AI scientist Yann LeCun have visited India in recent months. Nadella said at a conference in the southern Indian city of Bengaluru that the $ 3 billion investment would be the “single largest expansion” in the country.
Read more: Microsoft Reduces OpenAI Usage to Boost Copilot AI
Microsoft will also train 10 million people in AI in India by 2030, Nadella said. When Nadella visited India early last year, he announced the company would provide 2 million people in the country with AI skilling opportunities by 2025, focused on training individuals in smaller cities as well as rural areas.
Nadella met Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday, and the pair discussed “tech, innovation and AI” and “Microsoft’s ambitious expansion and investment plans in India.” Microsoft has been pouring billions of dollars into expanding capacity across the globe to boost AI infrastructure and its data centre network.
The company last week unveiled plans to invest about $80 billion in fiscal 2025. The investment, more than half of which will be in the United States, will focus on developing data centres to train AI models and deploy AI and cloud-based applications.
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