Major US tech firms’ pledges in the country underscore its emergence as a hub for cloud, AI and deep-tech growth
E-COMMERCE giant Amazon said on Wednesday (Dec 10) it will nearly double its investment in India, seeking to expand exports, create jobs and invest in artificial intelligence (AI) in the world’s most populous nation.
Several global corporations, including technology giant Microsoft, have announced large investments this year in the South Asian nation, the world’s fifth-largest economy, which is projected to have more than 900 million Internet users by year’s end.
“Amazon has announced plans to invest more than US$35 billion across all its businesses in India through 2030, building on nearly $40 billion invested in the country so far,” the US online giant said.
“This investment will focus on business expansion as well as three strategic pillars: AI-driven digitisation, export growth, and job creation.”
The announcement comes a day after Microsoft said it will invest US$17.5 billion to help build India’s AI infrastructure, with CEO Satya Nadella calling it “our largest investment ever in Asia”.
Amazon said it had invested in both building physical and digital infrastructure, including transportation networks, data centres, digital payments infrastructure and technology development.
“The investment will create one million jobs, boost cumulative exports to US$80 billion, and deliver AI benefits to 15 million small businesses,” it added.
Amazon said it will also build on existing investments that have “digitised 12 million small businesses and enabled US$20 billion in exports”.
“We’re excited to continue being a catalyst for India’s growth,” top Amazon official Amit Agarwal said.
“Harness this opportunity”
Amazon’s is the latest in a slew of major tech investments in India.
On Tuesday, Microsoft said one of the key priorities of its investment plan was “building secure, sovereign-ready hyperscale infrastructure to enable AI adoption in India”.
“At the heart of this effort is the significant progress being made at the India South Central cloud region, based in Hyderabad – that is set to go live in mid-2026,” it added.
Nadella made the announcement on social media after he met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi, thanking the leader for “an inspiring conversation on India’s AI opportunity”.
On Wednesday, in a speech in New Delhi, Nadella said Microsoft was committed to “skill 20 million people across India in AI” by 2030.
Modi, who also met on Tuesday with the heads of tech firms Intel and Cognizant, said he was “happy” that the tech giant had chosen India.
“The youth of India will harness this opportunity to innovate and leverage the power of AI for a better planet,” Modi said in a post on X.
India’s Andhra Pradesh state, meanwhile, is ramping up efforts to position itself as a technology hub, with officials courting US investors following Google’s announcement of a $15 billion investment.
In October, Google said it planned a “gigawatt-scale AI hub” in the Andhra Pradesh port city of Visakhapatnam, popularly known as Vizag.
Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian, speaking when the investment was announced, said it would be the company’s “largest AI hub” outside the US.
Andhra Pradesh’s Information Technology Minister Nara Lokesh is currently in San Francisco, meeting a wide range of technology leaders as part of the investment push.
Lokesh, in several posts on X on Wednesday detailing his meetings, urged chipmaker Nvidia to open a “Smart Factory”, encouraged rival Intel to explore setting up an assembly unit, and said he had invited Adobe to establish a centre.
He also asked Google to consider developing a drone assembly, calibration, and testing facility within the state’s planned “Drone City”. All of these remain proposals.
Visakhapatnam, a city of around two million people previously best known internationally for its cricket ground, is positioned to connect to submarine Internet cables from Singapore.
Stanford-educated Lokesh is the son of Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, who played a key role overseeing the rise of the city of Hyderabad as an information-technology hub, earning it the nickname “Cyberabad”.
The push comes ahead of an AI summit in India’s capital, New Delhi, in February, which the government hopes will bring in top political leaders and tech executives. AFP
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