India bids to attract over $200B in AI infrastructure investment by 2028
India has made a strong push to attract more than $200 billion in intelligence infrastructure investment over the next two years, as it seeks to position itself as a global hub for AI computing and applications at a time when capacity, capital, and control are strategic assets.
The plans were unveiled Tuesday by India’s IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw (pictured above) at the five-day AI Impact conference in New Delhi, which was attended by top executives from OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, and other global technology companies. To attract investment, the government is issuing a combination of tax incentives, state-funded funds, and policy support aimed at attracting the bulk of global AI to the South Asian nation.
India comes as US tech giants, including Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, have already committed about $70 billion to boost AI and cloud infrastructure in the country, giving New Delhi a basis to argue it can combine scale, cost benefits, and policy incentives to attract the next wave of global AI computing investment.
While the bulk of the estimated $200 billion is expected to go into AI infrastructure — including data centers, chips, and supporting systems, and includes about $70 billion already pledged by Big Tech companies — Vaishnaw said the Indian government expects another $17 billion in investment in deep-tech and AI applications, highlighting the push to move beyond infrastructure and catch-up. a lot.
The effort is supported by recent policy decisions aimed at making India a more attractive base for AI computing, including long-term tax breaks on export-oriented cloud services and 100 billion (approx. $1.1 billion) government-backed venture program targeting high-risk areas such as AI and advanced manufacturing. Earlier this month, New Delhi also extended the period during which high-tech companies qualify as startups to 20 years and raised the income limit for startup-specific benefits to R3 billion (about $33.08 million).
“We have seen VCs funding dtech startups,” Vaishnaw said at a press conference on the sidelines of the AI Impact Summit in New Delhi. “We’ve seen VCs and other players donate money to solve big solutions, big applications. We’ve seen VCs make money to research advanced models.”
India plans to increase its shared computing capacity under the IndiaAI Mission beyond its 38,000 GPUs, the minister said, with another 20,000 units to be added in the coming weeks, marking what he described as the next phase of the country’s AI strategy.
Looking forward, Vaishnaw said that the Indian government is preparing the second phase of its AI Mission, which focuses more on research and development, innovation, and the widespread distribution of AI tools, as well as the further expansion of shared computing capacity, as India seeks to expand access to AI infrastructure beyond a small group of companies.
The push also faces structural challenges, including access to reliable power and water in energy-intensive data centers, underscoring the risk of execution as India seeks to compress the years of building AI infrastructure into a much shorter period.
Vaishnaw acknowledged those challenges, saying the government recognizes the pressure AI will put on energy and water utilities, and pointed to India’s energy mix — more than half of installed generation capacity comes from clean sources — as an advantage as demand for data centers rises.
Whether India can deliver on that vision will matter beyond its borders, as companies seek new areas for AI computing amid rising costs, energy constraints, and intensifying global competition.
