US tech giants announce India deals at AI summit
Google said it would produce new undersea cables from India, and chip giant Nvidia announced its tie-ups with computing firms on Wednesday; tech giants rushed to announce deals and investments at a global artificial intelligence conference in New Delhi.
This week’s AI Impact Summit is the fourth annual gathering to discuss how to manage the rapidly evolving technology and is also an opportunity for India to raise its profile in the emerging sector.
“India is going to have a phenomenal run in artificial intelligence and we want to be a partner,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai told reporters as he announced the US firm’s plan to increase connectivity with the South Asian country.
It was stated that new direct subsea links will be built from India to Singapore, South Africa and Australia, and faster connections will be put forward as demand for computing power, including artificial intelligence, increases.
It’s part of a $15 billion investment Google announced in October to build the largest AI data center hub outside the United States in Visakhapatnam, a port city in the southeastern state of Andhra Pradesh.
Also Wednesday, California-based Nvidia, the world’s most valuable company, said it was working with three Indian cloud computing providers to deliver advanced processors to data centers that can train and run artificial intelligence systems.
Dozens of world leaders and ministerial delegations are in New Delhi for the summit to discuss the opportunities and threats posed by artificial intelligence, from job losses to misinformation.
Last year, India rose to third place, surpassing South Korea and Japan, in the annual global AI competitiveness ranking calculated by Stanford University researchers.
But experts say that despite its large-scale infrastructure plans and lofty ambitions for innovation, the country still has a long way to go before it can rival the United States and China.
The Artificial Intelligence conference brought with it a number of agreements, with IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw saying on Tuesday that India expects investments of more than $200 billion over the next two years, including nearly $90 billion already committed.
Mumbai cloud and data center provider L&T said on Wednesday it is working with Nvidia to build what it touts as “India’s largest gigawatt-scale AI factory.”
“We are laying the foundation for world-class AI infrastructure that will power India’s growth,” Nvidia boss Jensen Huang said in a statement that did not give figures for the investment.
Nvidia is also working with other Indian AI infrastructure players like Yotta, which announced a $2 billion deal with the US company that will provide it with 20,000 high-end AI processors.
Nvidia’s Huang is not attending the AI summit, but other senior US tech figures attending include OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Meta AI chief Alexandr Wang and Microsoft founder Bill Gates.
Microsoft said it would invest $50 billion this decade to increase the adoption of AI in developing countries, while US AI startup Anthropic and Indian IT giant Infosys said they would create AI agents for the telecom industry.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other world leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron and Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, are expected to make a statement at the weekend about how they plan to address concerns raised by artificial intelligence technology.
But experts say the event’s broad focus and vague promises made at previous global AI summits in France, South Korea and Britain mean concrete commitments are unlikely.
Nick Patience, AI practice leader at technology research group Futurum, told AFP that non-binding declarations could still “set the tone for what acceptable AI governance will look like”.
But “the largest AI companies are deploying their capabilities at a pace that makes 18-month legislative cycles seem glacial,” Patience said.
“So it’s a matter of whether governments can unite quickly enough to create meaningful guardrails before the actual standards are set by the companies themselves.”
It was published – 19 February 2026 09:15 IST
