In less than 24 hours, more than 50 billion yuan was splurged! Why are major technology giants increasing their investments in India's AI track?

Large technology companies are increasing their investment in India one after another, planning to invest billions of dollars. They are deeply attracted by India's rich data center construction resources, vast talent pool and digital user base, as well as the extensive market opportunities. In less than 24 hours, Microsoft Corporation (MSFT.US) and Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN.US) have pledged to invest over $50 billion in India's cloud services and artificial intelligence infrastructure; on Monday, Intel Corporation (INTC.US) announced plans to start chip production operations locally to seize the opportunity brought by the growth in personal computer demand and the rapid popularization of artificial intelligence. Although India has fallen slightly behind the United States and China in the development of local artificial intelligence basic models and lacks large-scale artificial intelligence infrastructure companies, it still hopes to actively create and deploy artificial intelligence applications at the enterprise level based on its expertise in information technology. This trend also brings huge development opportunities for large technology companies. Secretary of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology of India, S. Krishnan, stated that in order for any company to effectively utilize artificial intelligence, it is not enough to have just models or computing power, but they must also build their own applications and have a large number of talents to deploy these models. Stanford University ranks India as one of the top four countries in global and national artificial intelligence vitality rankings, alongside the United States, China, and the United Kingdom. The developer community GitHub ranks India as the top country, with its projects accounting for 24% of all global projects. Krishnan stated that India's opportunities lie more in "developing applications," and these applications will bring revenue to artificial intelligence companies. Rushing into the Indian AI race: Microsoft Corporation $17.5 billion, Amazon.com, Inc. $35 billion On Tuesday, Microsoft Corporation announced that it will invest $17.5 billion in India over the next four years, with these funds earmarked for the expansion of super-scale infrastructure, integration of artificial intelligence technology with the national platform, and comprehensive enhancement of the labor force's readiness for cutting-edge technology. Taran Patel, Research Director at Counterpoint Research, pointed out that this level of capital investment will help Microsoft Corporation seize the first-mover advantage in equipping data centers with large amounts of GPUs, promote Azure as the preferred platform for Indian artificial intelligence workloads, and further enhance its synergies with the government in promoting the development of public artificial intelligence infrastructure. Amazon.com, Inc. announced on Wednesday that it plans to invest over $35 billion in India, in addition to the $40 billion already invested, bringing its total investment in India to over $75 billion. In recent months, giants in the artificial intelligence and technology fields such as OpenAI, Alphabet Inc. Class C (GOOGL.US), and Perplexity have provided their self-developed tools to millions of users in India for free; Alphabet Inc. Class C has further finalized investment plans, earmarking $15 billion to expand data center capacity in southern India and focus on creating a new artificial intelligence Hub Group, Inc. Class A. Patel stated, "India has a vast digital user base, and the demand in the cloud and artificial intelligence fields is rapidly growing, while it also has a high-level IT ecosystem that can scale up and consume artificial intelligence at a large scale. These advantages make India not only a large user market, but also a key center for core engineering and deployment." Data center opportunity India has many significant advantages in data center construction. In the Asia-Pacific region, markets such as Japan, Australia, China, and Singapore have developed relatively mature data center markets. Singapore, as one of the earliest data center Hub Group, Inc. Class A in the region, faces a shortage of space when deploying large-scale data centers due to extremely limited land resources. In contrast, India has vast land resources, providing ample space for the development of large-scale data centers. Compared to data centers in Europe, the power costs in India are relatively low. Furthermore, its growing capacity for renewable energy is crucial for data centers with high power consumption. Taking these factors into account, the overall economic cost-effectiveness of building data centers in India is becoming increasingly attractive. The booming rise of e-commerce in recent years has become a key driver of data center growth. At the same time, the continuous rise in local market demand, as well as possibly new regulations on social media data storage, further clarify the growth logic. In summary, India is entering a crucial development "sweet spot." Global cloud service providers, participants in the artificial intelligence field, and India's domestic digitalization process are converging here, shaping one of the most attractive and hottest data center markets in the world. Dipika Ghiri, Deputy Director and Research Head of Big Data and Artificial Intelligence at International Data Corporation (IDC), stated, "India is a key market and one of the fastest-growing regions in artificial intelligence spending in the Asia-Pacific region." She further added, "The existing significant gap actually means a significant opportunity, which is that there is a shortage of computing infrastructure suitable for running artificial intelligence models." Therefore, large technology companies are trying to seize the opportunity at the infrastructure level by launching large-scale investments in cloud services and data centers. Krishnan pointed out that as global companies build data centers in India to provide services globally, they are now expanding the layout of additional capacity from traditional core areas near submarine cable landing points (such as Mumbai and Chennai) to service bases around IT cities such as Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Pune.