India is positioning itself as a major hub for artificial intelligence, highlighted by its recent four-day AI Impact Summit that attracted global tech leaders and policymakers.

Executives from OpenAI, Anthropic, Nvidia, Microsoft, Google, and Cloudflare attended, alongside heads of state including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President Emmanuel Macron.

Key speakers included Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Reliance Chairman Mukesh Ambani, and Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis.

India’s AI strategy emphasizes financial commitment and infrastructure, with a $1.1 billion state-backed venture capital fund targeting AI and advanced manufacturing startups nationwide.

Tech Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw announced a goal to attract over $200 billion in AI infrastructure investment within two years, while Adani pledges $100 billion to build renewable-powered AI data centers by 2035.

Global AI firms are expanding rapidly in India, with OpenAI reporting over 100 million weekly active ChatGPT users, making it the second-largest user base globally, and planning offices in Bengaluru and Mumbai.

OpenAI has partnered with the Tata group to deploy 100 megawatts of compute in India, aiming to scale to 1 gigawatt, while Anthropic established its first Indian office in Bengaluru and collaborates with Infosys to deploy Claude models for enterprises.

Investments in Indian AI startups continue to surge, with Blackstone acquiring a majority stake in Neysa in a $600 million equity fundraise, and Bengaluru-based C2i raising $15 million from Peak XV, Yali Deeptech, and TDK Ventures.

A major compute deployment involves UAE’s G42 partnering with U.S. chipmaker Cerebras, MBZUAI, and India’s C-DAC to deliver 8 exaflops via a supercomputer in India.

The summit also addressed AI’s impact on India’s IT services sector, with HCL CEO Vineet Nayyar emphasizing profit generation over job creation and Vinod Khosla predicting significant disruption in IT and BPO industries due to AI automation.