Adopt fast or fall behind in AI, Microsoft CEO Nadella tells India

Rate of diffusion will decide winners of next tech wave, Microsoft CEO says in Delhi

India should prioritise ensuring that organisations and citizens adopt the latest technologies as quickly as possible to maximise benefits from innovations in artificial intelligence (AI), Microsoft Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella said on Wednesday.

 

“I am a firm believer that ultimately, when it comes to new technology, the rate of diffusion is the winner. People who have studied historical technological waves have said that countries, communities, and companies that adopted leading technology to create more leading technology were the winners,” he said.

 

Nadella was speaking to stakeholders in Delhi during his ongoing four-day tour of India. He is scheduled to hold similar events in Bengaluru on Thursday and in Mumbai on Friday. 

 

Companies and countries that simply tout leading technology for consumers without using it to create innovative products will fall behind in the AI race, he added. India has created a virtuous cycle of policy, programmes, technology stacks, and markets, helping expand the reach of technology benefits to many Indians, Nadella said. “In fact, Bill (Gates) loves the India Stack, and he always asks me, ‘Can I take the India Stack and put it somewhere else?’”

 

Companies that use AI to enhance productivity must also find ways to include a human in the loop, viewing it as a “design issue rather than a technical issue”, Nadella said, adding that AI will be truly useful only if it changes the lives of people and citizens.

 

As part of its commitments to India, Microsoft has pledged to train nearly 20 million people in various aspects of AI.

 

Speaking about the company’s plan to invest $17.5 billion in India between 2026 and 2029, Nadella said the India South Central data centre in Hyderabad, currently under construction, is expected to go live next year and will complement existing capacities in Pune, Chennai, and Mumbai.

 

On Tuesday, Microsoft announced the $17.5 billion investment to advance India’s Cloud and AI infrastructure, skilling, and ongoing operations. This will be in addition to the $3 billion the company pledged for India in January.

 

The investment will focus on three key pillars: scale, skills, and sovereignty. As part of this effort, Microsoft also launched the Sovereign Public Cloud and Sovereign Private Cloud for Indian customers. “With Sovereign Public Cloud now available in India, organisations can leverage a prescriptive architecture for deploying workloads in Azure with built-in compliance guardrails using Sovereign Landing Zones, enforce policies, and apply governance controls,” Microsoft said.

 

Nadella added on Wednesday that all data processing for the company's flagship large language model and chatbot CoPilot is now being handled in India.