Microsoft will spend $3 billion to expand its Azure cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) capacity in India, CEO Satya Nadella said on Tuesday, doubling down on a country with tech expertise and low costs to help turn such investments profitable.
The two-year investment, its biggest ever in the country, will also be used to upskill Indians in AI, a Microsoft spokesperson said, clarifying this outlay was on top of the company’s recently announced plan to invest $80bn on AI-enabled data centres in fiscal year 2025.
India is a key growth market for US tech giants, with executives ranging from Nvidia boss Jensen Huang to Advanced Micro Devices CEO Lisa Su visiting the country in recent months, promising big investments.
Microsoft, which has more than 20,000 employees across 10 Indian cities, is aiming to both help the local tech community develop and tap into its talent base, Nadella said at a conference in the southern Indian city of Bengaluru.
He noted the community’s contribution to Microsoft, specifically to their involvement in AI projects on GitHub Copilot, the company’s generative AI-based tool for developers.
“India is the second-largest [developer community on GitHub] after the United States. In fact, it’s projected to be the largest in 2028.
