Tech giants commit billions to Indian AI as New Delhi pushes for superpower status

Tech giants have committed to funneling hundreds of billions of dollars into Indian AI efforts, against the backdrop of a major summit in the country that’s brought together world leaders and AI execs.

Record sums are being ploughed into AI as governments and companies across the globe race to roll out the technology. Hyperscalers — including the likes of Amazon, Microsoft, Meta and Alphabet — announced capital expenditure that could hit $700 billion on AI this year.

The past week has seen Indian tech group Reliance reportedly announcing plans to invest $110 billion into data centers and other infrastructure, and compatriot Adani outlining a $100 billion AI data center buildout over the next decade.

There were also big announcements from U.S. tech firms.

Microsoft said at the Indian AI Impact Summit that it was on pace to invest $50 billion in AI in the Global South by the end of the decade. OpenAI and chipmaker AMD both announced partnerships with Tata Group to build AI capabilities, and U.S. asset manager Blackstone also said it had participated in a $600 million equity raise for Indian AI infrastructure Neysa.

The commitments were announced during a summit that was also marked by points of controversy. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates withdrew from the event amid public backlash for his past relationship with deceased financier and sex predator Jeffrey Epstein. An Indian university was also criticized after claiming it had invented a commercially available Chinese-made robot dog.

The AI Summit came as India pushes to be one of the world’s tech superpowers. The country has approved $18 billion of chip projects as it looks to bolster its local supply chain.

Meanwhile, the U.S. and India are edging towards a trade pact that would lower tariffs and increase economic cooperation between the two countries. Tech ties were deepened further at the event.

Representatives from both governments signed the Pax Silica agreement, a U.S.-led initiative launched by the Trump administration aimed at securing the global supply chain for silicon-based technologies.

The potential tech groups see in the market was evident in the roster of names in attendance. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, Anthropic boss Dario Amodei and Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis were all on the billing.

U.S. chip darling Nvidia announced it was expanding partnerships with venture capital firms in India as it looks to deepen exposure to promising tech companies being developed in the ecosystem.

While India’s public markets were booming towards the end of 2025, private capital is still lacking, Anirudh Suri, founding partner of the India Internet Fund, told CNBC.

“What we’ve not maybe seen as much of right now is venture capital and private equity money to come in to invest in Indian entrepreneurs in the AI space,” he said.

While India is seen as lagging behind the likes of the U.S. and China at the frontier of AI development, Microsoft President Brad Smith told CNBC that this could change in certain domain-specific areas.

“If you look at the…engineering talent, you quickly conclude India too can be a place where models are developed,” he said. There will be a “variety of different DeepSeek moments” to come in the future and some of those will be in India, alongside places like China and other countries, Smith added.

But some say India is still playing catchup.

“India is making splashy attempts to kickstart its belated AI push, but it is doing so primarily by offering headline-grabbing sops without addressing many of the underlying difficulties of actually doing business in India,” Udith Sikand, senior emerging markets analyst at financial research firm Gavekal, told CNBC.