By Aditya Soni and Deborah Mary Sophia
BENGALURU (Reuters) – Microsoft is set to invest $3 billion to enhance its Azure cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) capacity in India, announced CEO Satya Nadella on Tuesday, showcasing a firm commitment to a nation renowned for its tech expertise and cost-efficient resources with the aim of making such investments financially rewarding.
This two-year investment, marking Microsoft’s largest ever in the country, will not only fuel the expansion of AI capabilities but also focus on upskilling Indians in this domain, as clarified by a Microsoft spokesperson. This significant allocation is in addition to the company’s recently disclosed strategy to inject $80 billion into AI-enabled data centers by fiscal 2025.
India remains a pivotal growth market for U.S. tech behemoths, evident from the recent visits of industry leaders like Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and Advanced Micro Devices’ Lisa Su, who have pledged substantial investments in the country’s burgeoning tech landscape.
With a workforce exceeding 20,000 spread across 10 Indian cities, Microsoft aims to foster the local tech community’s advancement and harness its pool of talent, as emphasized by Nadella during a conference in Bengaluru. He underscored the community’s invaluable contributions, particularly within AI projects on GitHub Copilot, Microsoft’s generative AI tool tailored for developers.
Nadella highlighted India’s standing as the second-largest developer community on GitHub, projected to assume the top position by 2028, noting the nation’s noteworthy involvement in AI endeavors comparable only to the U.S.
In the wake of escalating pressure on tech giants to demonstrate the profitability of their substantial AI investments, Microsoft has positioned GitHub as one of its few AI ventures that has yielded significant returns. In July, the company disclosed that the tool had generated an annual run-rate of $2 billion.
Microsoft’s ambitious goal is to train 10 million individuals in AI by 2030 in India, building upon the upskilling of 2.4 million individuals last year. Nadella’s Indian heritage and the nation’s reverence for engineering degrees as a gateway to prosperity have buoyed his popularity among the populace, evident from the throngs of attendees who eagerly awaited his keynote address as part of the “Microsoft AI Tour” in Bengaluru.
Among the attendees was Prashant Bhanawat, a software engineer whose company leverages Azure AI services, who shared his anticipation of witnessing cutting-edge products in development and, of course, the revered presence of Satya Nadella.
(Reporting by Aditya Soni and Deborah Sophia in Bengaluru; Editing by Mrigank Dhaniwala and Savio D’Souza)
