India to Become a Leader in AI Innovation: Satya Nadella on Investing for Tech Innovations and Skilling Addressing an audience during the Microsoft AI Tour, Nadella also shared plans to train 10 million people in AI skills in India by 2030.
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Microsoft chairman and CEO Satya Nadella announced a USD three billion investment for cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) to empower India– the tech giant's largest expansion in the country over the next two years.
"India is rapidly becoming a leader in AI innovation, unlocking new opportunities across the country," said Satya Nadella, chairman and CEO, Microsoft.
"In India, we are excited about all the regions that we have. We have Central India, South India, West India, and South Central India. We also have the capacities that we built up with Jio. We have a lot of regional expansion happening."
LinkedIn data reveals that Indian professionals are leading in learning and skill-building. Having been early adopters of AI, there has been a 122 per cent year-over-year increase in native members adding AI skills to their profiles, against 71 per cent worldwide. Microsoft launched ADVANTA(I)GE India initiative in 2024 with the aim to train two million people by 2025– a figure already achieved with 2.4 million individuals being trained in under a year. Sixty-five per cent of participants are women while 74 per cent hail from tier II and tier III Indian cities. Addressing an audience during the Microsoft AI Tour, Nadella also shared plans to train 10 million people in AI skills in India by 2030.
Talking about GitHub, he shared that Indian developers comprised 17 million users on the platform- a rise of 28 per cent Y-o-Y. India is expected to overtake the United States by 2028 as the largest developer community. The country stands second to the US with 30,594 contributors to genAI projects.
The announcement comes after the chairman met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday in New Delhi.
"Thank you, PM @narendramodi ji for your leadership. Excited to build on our commitment to making India AI-first and work together on our continued expansion in the country to ensure every Indian benefit from this AI platform shift," Nadella posted on X.
