Microsoft Commits $17.5 Billion to Scale AI and Cloud in India
Four-year plan follows Modi–Nadella talks and marks Microsoft’s largest investment in Asia.
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Microsoft Corp. on Tuesday said it plans to invest$17.5 billion in India over the next four years to expand artificial intelligence and cloud infrastructure, deepening its role in one of the world’s fastest-growing digital markets and building on its earlier $3 billion commitment announced in early 2025.
The announcement followed a meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Microsoft Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella, where the two discussed India’s AI roadmap and the shift toward an AI-led economy.
“When it comes to AI, the world is optimistic about India. Happy to see India being the place where Microsoft will make its largest-ever investment in Asia. The youth of India will harness this opportunity to innovate and leverage the power of AI for a better planet,” Modi said on X.
Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw called the investment a “major milestone,” adding that it signals India’s emergence as a trusted global technology partner.
A large portion of the funding will go toward expanding Microsoft’s cloud footprint, including the launch of a new India South Central cloud region in Hyderabad, scheduled to go live in mid-2026.
The facility, the company’s largest in the country, will operate with three availability zones. Existing data center regions in Chennai, Hyderabad, and Pune will also be upgraded to support mission-critical workloads with lower latency and higher resilience.
Microsoft said the investment will support three focus areas: infrastructure at scale, workforce skills, and digital sovereignty. Its India workforce of about 22,000 employees across Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune, Gurugram, and Noida works on global products including Copilot Studio, Azure AI Search, AI agents, and speech and translation systems.
As part of the rollout, Microsoft will integrate advanced AI features into the government’s e-Shram and National Career Service platforms, which together serve more than 310 million informal and formal workers.
The upgrade will add multilingual access, AI-driven job matching, predictive analytics on skills demand, automated résumé creation, and personalized pathways to formal employment, built using Azure OpenAI Service.
To power the next generation of AI talent, Microsoft doubled its earlier commitment and now plans to train 20 million Indians in AI skills by 2030.
Under its ADVANTA(I)GE India initiative, the company has trained 5.6 million people since January, and facilitated job or entrepreneurial opportunities for 125,000 of them.
Microsoft also announced Sovereign Public Cloud and Sovereign Private Cloud offerings for India. These sovereign-ready cloud environments will help enterprises comply with India’s regulatory frameworks while running AI workloads securely at scale.
Microsoft 365 Local, running on Azure Local, is now available, with advanced data governance features for sensitive sectors.
By the end of 2025, Microsoft 365 Copilot will offer in-country data processing in India, making India one of the only four markets globally to receive this capability.
