Microsoft on Tuesday unveiled what it called its largest investment in Asia, committing more than Rs 1.5 lakh crore (about US$17.5 billion) to expand the company’s cloud and artificial intelligence footprint in India. The announcement, made by CEO Satya Nadella after a meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, says the funds will be used to build AI infrastructure, boost digital skills and develop sovereign cloud capabilities across the country.
In a post on X, Nadella thanked the prime minister for “an inspiring conversation on India’s AI opportunity” and said Microsoft will back India’s push toward an “AI first” future by focusing investments on scale, skills and sovereignty. The company said the resources will help create new data center capacity, strengthen localized AI services and expand training programmes aimed at developing job-ready skills for the Indian workforce.
Microsoft described the commitment as a multi year plan that follows an earlier $3 billion investment the firm has been ramping across India. Local reporting and company statements indicate the new funds will be deployed over the coming years to establish one of Microsoft’s largest hyperscale presences in the region, with additional cloud and AI infrastructure coming online to support enterprises, startups and public sector workloads.
The investment underscores how India has become a strategic market for global cloud providers as demand for AI compute and data services soars. Microsoft said part of the programme will expand skilling initiatives from classroom and online training to industry partnerships aimed at equipping developers, data scientists and other professionals with AI capabilities. It also highlighted plans to strengthen sovereign offerings that let governments and enterprises run sensitive workloads under locally controlled frameworks.
Industry observers said the announcement will intensify competition between major cloud providers in India, where a rush to build AI infrastructure has accelerated in recent months. Increased local capacity could lower latency for AI applications, reduce reliance on foreign data routes and make it easier for Indian firms to adopt generative AI tools at scale. Analysts add that such large scale infrastructure projects often bring wider ecosystem benefits, including jobs and partner-led services.
Government officials welcomed the investment as a vote of confidence in India’s digital economy and regulatory environment. Officials have been promoting measures to attract strategic technology investments and to develop local capabilities in AI, data and cybersecurity. Microsoft’s commitment comes as many large cloud vendors expand regional investments to meet both commercial demand and policy requirements around data sovereignty.
Microsoft did not immediately release a detailed public timetable or a line by line breakdown of how the US$17.5 billion will be allocated. Company spokespeople said more specifics would be shared in the coming weeks as project plans are finalised with partners and government agencies. For now the announcement signals a large scale push by one of the world’s biggest technology firms to anchor significant AI infrastructure and capability building inside India.
