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India has set out an aggressive push to attract more than $200 billion in artificial-intelligence infrastructure investment over the next two years, as it seeks to position itself as a global hub for AI computing and applications at a time when capacity, capital, and regulation are becoming strategic assets.<\/p>\n
The plans were outlined on Tuesday by India\u2019s IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw (pictured above) at the Indian government-backed five-day AI Impact Summit<\/a> in New Delhi, attended by senior executives from OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, and other global technology firms. To attract investment, the government is rolling out a mix of tax incentives, state-backed venture capital, and policy support aimed at pulling more of the global AI value chain into the South Asian nation.<\/p>\n India\u2019s pitch comes as U.S. technology giants, including Amazon<\/a>, Google<\/a>, and Microsoft<\/a>, have already committed about $70 billion<\/a> to expand AI and cloud infrastructure in the country, giving New Delhi a foundation to argue it can combine scale, cost advantages, and policy incentives to attract the next wave of global AI computing investment.<\/p>\n While the bulk of the projected $200 billion is expected to flow into AI infrastructure \u2014 including data centers, chips, and supporting systems, and encompassing the around $70 billion already pledged<\/a> by Big Tech companies \u2014 Vaishnaw said the Indian government also anticipates an additional $17 billion of investment into deep-tech and AI applications, highlighting a push to move beyond infrastructure and capture more of the value chain.<\/p>\n The effort is backed by recent policy decisions aimed at making India a more attractive base for AI computing, including\u00a0long-term tax relief for export-oriented cloud services<\/a>\u00a0and a\u00a0\u20b9100 billion (<\/a>about<\/span> $1.1 billion) government-backed venture program<\/a> targeting high-risk areas such as AI and advanced manufacturing. Earlier this month, New Delhi also extended the period for which deep-tech companies<\/a> qualify as startups to 20 years and raised the revenue threshold for startup-specific benefits to \u20b93 billion (about $33.08 million).<\/p>\n \u201cWe have seen VCs committing funds for dtech startups,\u201d Vaishnaw said at a press briefing on the sidelines of the AI Impact Summit in New Delhi. \u201cWe have seen VCs and other players committing funds for big solutions, big applications. We have seen VCs committing funds for further research in cutting-edge models.\u201d<\/p>\n