Microsoft intends to join other multinational IT businesses in establishing vital cloud and AI infrastructure in Southeast Asia by investing $3 billion in India to enhance crucial cloud and AI capabilities. After meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi earlier this week, whose administration has been attempting to draw in global software companies, Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella announced the investment on Tuesday.
“I am really excited to announce the single largest expansion we have done in India, investing an additional USD 3 billion to expand our Azure capacity,” Nadella said at an event in Bengaluru.
With artificial intelligence at the core of its global drive at a time when it is competing with firms like Google and OpenAI, this represents a major acceleration of Microsoft’s growth in Asia.
Microsoft also said earlier this week that it will invest around $80 billion in fiscal 2025 to build data centers for cloud-based and AI application deployment and model training.
The need for data centers, which enable tech companies to connect thousands of chips in clusters to provide access to storage, computation, and analytics services via the internet, is fueled by AI’s massive processing power requirements. The worldwide cloud market is led by Microsoft’s Azure, Alphabet’s Google Cloud Platform, and Amazon Inc.’s AWS.
Microsoft’s investments in India are intended to encourage companies and developers to utilize its AI tools, including Copilot, in addition to increasing consumer access to AI. Microsoft has been providing businesses with its Microsoft 365 Copilot AI enterprise solution, and the firm reports that uptake is accelerating in markets like India.
“The best way to conceptualize Copilot is that it’s the UI for AI. AI needs to interface with us, and that’s why I think this organizing layer of Copilot becomes even more important in a world where many native applications are doing autonomous work,” Nadella explained.
Additionally, Microsoft is stepping up its efforts to develop AI agents, a new class of self-governing machine capable of more than just communication. These agents have access to websites, software applications, and other internet resources, such as travel websites, online calendars, spreadsheets, and more. Within Copilot Studio, the tech giant’s platform for personalizing and developing these “copilot” aides, Nadella wants businesses to develop their own self-governing AI agents. With Google, OpenAI, and Salesforce all releasing their own “agentic” AI systems, the competition in the AI agent market is getting more fierce.
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