Chief executive Satya Nadella said Microsoft would spend US$17.5bn in India over four years starting in 2026, building on a previous US$3bn commitment, in a move that would give the company the largest cloud‑computing presence in the country.
Microsoft plans a new hyperscale data centre region in Hyderabad, expected to go live in mid‑2026, alongside expansions of existing regions in Chennai, Hyderabad and Pune.
Reuters said Nadella framed the India spending as support to “build the infrastructure, skills, and sovereign capabilities needed for India’s AI first future,” and noted that the company has doubled an earlier pledge to equip 20 million Indians with essential AI skills by 2030.
Reuters also reported that Google plans to invest US$15bn over five years to build an AI data centre in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, its biggest commitment in India, underscoring competition for AI infrastructure in the world’s most populous nation.
For the AI build‑out more broadly, Reuters reported that Microsoft and other major US cloud providers are expected to spend more than US$400bn on AI this year as they construct data‑centre capacity required for services such as ChatGPT, Copilot and Gemini.