American tech-giant Microsoft on Tuesday announced an investment of $17.5 billion in India between 2026 and 2029, the largest in Asia and among the biggest by a tech company so far.
The announcement was made by Satya Nadella, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Microsoft after meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the evening.
“Thank you, PM @narendramodi ji, for an inspiring conversation on India’s AI opportunity. To support the country’s ambitions, Microsoft is committing $17.5B —our largest investment ever in Asia — to help build the infrastructure, skills, and sovereign capabilities needed for India’s AI first future,” Nadella posted on X after meeting the PM.
Appreciating the announcements made by Microsoft, PM Modi in a post on X said, “When it comes to AI, the world is optimistic about India! Had a very productive discussion with Mr. Satya Nadella. 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.”
The investment comes on top of the earlier $3 billion that Microsoft had announced earlier this year to spend by 2026. The company said it was on track to exhaust this amount by the end of calendar year (CY) 2026. In total, Microsoft will be investing $20 billion from 2025-2030. The company said the investment will be utilised to advance the country’s cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, skilling and ongoing operations.
“Our new investment will be used to continue to scale our cloud and AI infrastructure, skilling initiatives and ongoing operations across India. This includes our workforce of more than 22,000 employees across Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune, Gurugram, Noida and other cities — representing the diversity of Microsoft’s businesses,” the company said in a statement.
These teams are not only powering India’s digital transformation but also delivering AI impact at scale globally —Copilot Studio, Azure AI Search, AI agents, AI speech and translation, Azure Machine Learning and more, it said.
“One of the key priorities of our investment is building secure, sovereign-ready hyperscale infrastructure to enable AI adoption in India. At the heart of this effort is the significant progress being made at the India South Central cloud region, based in Hyderabad – that is set to go live in mid-2026. This will be our largest hyperscale region in India, comprising three availability zones — roughly equivalent in size to two Eden Gardens stadiums combined,” the company added.
Microsoft also announced its efforts to integrate advanced AI capabilities into two key digital public platforms of the Ministry of Labour and Employment — e-Shram and the National Career Service (NCS). The initiative aims to extend the benefits of AI to more than 310 million informal workers across the country.
“India’s AI journey depends on empowering skilled talent. For this, we are doubling our commitment of January 2025 to equip 20 million Indians with essential AI skills by 2030, working with government, industry and digital public platforms to ensure equitable access to opportunity,” the company further said adding that it has already trained 5.6 million people since January 2025 — well ahead of the original goal of training 10 million by 2030.
“Today’s announcements reflect our continued commitment to India about building an ecosystem that drives innovation, trust and opportunity for all. By expanding hyperscale infrastructure, embedding AI into national platforms and advancing workforce readiness, India is positioned to lead the world in the AI era—powered by scale, skilling and sovereignty,” the company added.
Published on December 9, 2025
