The Indian subcontinent, long favoured by multinationals for its vast consumer market, is now drawing a fresh wave of investment from Big Tech giants seeking to tap into its massive internet and smartphone user base.
The move comes as India’s rapidly expanding digital landscape offers global tech firms their next phase of growth in the AI era, with the government’s aggressive digitisation drive providing critical support.
Amazon makes its biggest India commitment yet
Amazon on Wednesday sharply raised the scale of its India ambition, saying it will invest more than $35 billion across its businesses by 2030.
The move takes its cumulative investment in the country to $75 billion by the end of the decade, marking one of the company’s strongest signals yet that India remains a priority growth market despite intensifying competition.
The new commitment represents a steep jump from a July update, when Amazon projected total India investments would reach $26 billion by 2030.
The company said the fresh capital will be deployed toward business expansion and three strategic pillars: AI-driven digitisation, export growth, and job creation.
Amit Agarwal, senior vice president for emerging markets, said Amazon is committed to deepening its role as a catalyst for India’s economic growth.
The company plans to create one million additional job opportunities, raise cumulative exports enabled through its platforms to $80 billion, and extend AI-enabled tools to 15 million small businesses and hundreds of millions of consumers by 2030.
Microsoft unveils its largest Asia investment amid Nadella’s India visit
Amazon’s announcement came just hours after Microsoft said it would invest $17.5 billion in India’s cloud and AI infrastructure—its largest investment in Asia.
Spread over four years, the plan focuses on expanding hyperscale capacity, embedding AI capabilities into national digital platforms, and advancing workforce readiness programmes.
The investment builds on Microsoft’s $3 billion pledge in January and coincides with CEO Satya Nadella’s visit to India this week.
Nadella met Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday before delivering a keynote in New Delhi on Wednesday, signalling the company’s intent to make India a central pillar of its global AI strategy.
When it comes to AI, the world is optimistic about India!
Had a very productive discussion with Mr. Satya Nadella. Happy to see India being the place where Microsoft will make its largest-ever investment in Asia.
The youth of India will harness this opportunity to innovate
Google commits $15 billion to build major AI hub
In October, Google’s parent Alphabet announced a $15 billion investment to build an AI data hub in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh.
The facility in Visakhapatnam will be part of Google’s wider global network spanning 12 countries.
Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, said the Indian hub will be the company’s largest AI centre outside the United States, with spending spread over the next five years.
He added that India’s scale, talent base and rapidly digitising economy made it one of the company’s most promising long-term markets.
India becomes a strategic prize in global AI race
The surge in investment reflects India’s growing importance in the global AI landscape.
With more than 800 million internet users, hundreds of millions of smartphone subscribers, a rapidly expanding startup ecosystem, and a government aggressively pushing digital public infrastructure, India offers both volume and momentum.
This year alone, OpenAI and Anthropic have opened offices in India, while Google and Perplexity have struck partnerships with telecom operators Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel to deepen market penetration.
However, hyperscalers face significant constraints as they scale.
Patchy power supply, high energy costs, and water scarcity could slow down the expansion of data centers—critical for AI compute—and raise operating costs for cloud providers.
Chip ambitions rise as India pushes semiconductor mission
Beyond cloud and AI, India is also accelerating its semiconductor ambitions.
Under the “India Semiconductor Mission,” the government has approved 10 chip projects involving more than $18 billion in investments.
On Monday, US chip designer Intel signed a deal with Tata Electronics to collaborate on chip offerings in India, including products tailored for AI applications.
Investors eye opportunities in the AI infrastructure boom
The creation of an AI ecosystem is opening new opportunities for investors in India’s $5.4 trillion equity market, which has lagged this year’s global AI-driven rally due partly to the absence of pure-play domestic AI names.
Market participants are instead turning to companies building supporting infrastructure—from equipment manufacturers to power generators—poised to benefit from the data-center boom.
CBRE estimates that investments in India’s data-center market could surpass $100 billion by 2027.
“India is powering the AI era through the infrastructure needed to run it—the servers and energy capacity,” said Shambhavi Gupta, founder of global macro insights platform Nine Spot Seven. “Unlike the tech rally, this one is rooted in tangible assets.”
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