Microsoft chief executive officer Satya Nadella announced last Tuesday, January 7, that the company would spend $3 billion to expand its Azure cloud and artificial intelligence capacity in India.
Mr. Nadella noted that the technology giant will double its efforts in the mentioned South Asian country, where there is tech expertise and low costs. According to him, appropriate circumstances can make Microsoft’s investments in India profitable.
The financial injections announced on Tuesday are the largest in the history of the technology giant. A Microsoft spokesperson said that part of these investments will be used to upskill Indians in the area of artificial intelligence.
It’s also worth mentioning that this month, the technology giant announced its intention to invest $80 billion in AI-enabled data centers in fiscal 2025. This plan reflects the intensification of the so-called artificial intelligence race, which has already become what can be called a global technological trend. The companies are committed to actively investing in the development of AI, which is the most advanced technology of modernity and contains significant potential, including the likely possibility of groundbreaking cognitive evolution that surpasses the capabilities of the human mind.
It is worth noting separately that India is increasingly being considered by firms as a kind of alternative manufacturing and technology center against the background of consistently growing tensions in relations between the United States and China, which already has practical consequences in the form of certain trade restrictions between these two countries. There are also no signs of an early improvement in interaction between Beijing and Washington. India may become a kind of beneficiary of this geopolitical situation. In the relevant context, it is worth mentioning that Nvidia boss Jensen Huang and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) chief executive officer Lisa Su have visited the South Asian country in recent months.
Microsoft currently has more than 20,000 employees in 10 Indian cities.
