As India hosts the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi with a strong focus on sovereign AI, remarks by White House official Sriram Krishnan have sparked controversy. The Chennai-born advisor drew criticism online after urging countries, including India, to build on what he described as the “American AI stack” during his address at the summit.
Sriram Krishnan currently serves as the Senior White House Policy Advisor on AI. (X/@sriramk)
Krishnan, who currently serves as the Senior White House Policy Advisor on AI, said the US wants the rest of the world to adopt US-built AI infrastructure, models and applications. “We want to make sure that the world uses the American AI stack… we want to make sure that the world uses our AI models, and third it uses our applications and builds applications on top. We want to make sure we are amazing and easy to do business with,” he said.
“For India, we have this conversation about what sovereign AI actually means. When we think about it, America is going to have a minimum of $600 billion in investments across areas and it is going to power AI training runs, data centres, and compute. We think all of our allies, and India is a key ally, should be leveraging and building on top of this infrastructure. This does not mean giving up on strategic autonomy. Indian companies will need to bring in local language support and culture,” he added.
Sriram Krishnan faces backlash
However, Krishnan’s comments triggered sharp reactions from Indian entrepreneurs and social media users, many of whom questioned the implications for India’s AI sovereignty.
Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu criticised the remarks, saying, “This is why brain drain is costly and we must fight hard to retain the next generation of talent in India,” while sharing a clip from Krishnan’s session.
Capitalmind founder and CEO Deepak Shenoy said India must build its own foundational AI models. “India should and will build foundational models, and in general, we need things that cannot be denied to us if America doesn’t like us,” he wrote.
Several users also slammed Krishnan for referring to India as an “ally,” pointing to his Indian education and background. “This guy studied in an engineering college in Chennai and now calls India an ally,” one user commented. Others noted that he became a naturalised US citizen only in 2016.
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Who is Sriram Krishnan?
Born in Chennai, Krishnan studied at SRM Valliammai Engineering College in Kattankulathur, Tamil Nadu. He began his career at Microsoft, where he worked on Windows Azure APIs and services, and later joined Facebook in 2013, playing a key role in scaling its mobile app ads business.
He has also worked at Snap and Twitter (now X), where he collaborated with Elon Musk during the platform’s restructuring. In 2021, Krishnan became a general partner at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and later led its first international office in London.
An author of Programming Windows Azure for O’Reilly, Krishnan is also an advisor to Indian fintech firm Cred and co-hosts The Aarthi and Sriram Show podcast with his wife, Aarthi Ramamurthy.