Global tech giant Microsoft has unveiled one of its largest investments in Asia, announcing that it will invest US$ 17.5 billion over the next four years to advance India’s cloud and artificial intelligence infrastructure. The announcement follows Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella’s meeting with Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, ahead of Microsoft’s India AI tour.
In a statement published on its website, Microsoft explained its choice of India saying, “India stands at a pivotal moment in its AI journey, one defined by impact at scale, determined to lead. As technology becomes a catalyst for inclusive growth and economic transformation, the country is emerging as a frontier AI nation.”
It further said that during the meeting PM Modi and CEO Nadella discussed “the country’s AI roadmap and growth priorities”, and that “Microsoft and India are poised to set new benchmarks and drive the country’s leap from digital public infrastructure to AI public infrastructure in the coming decade.”
Taking to X (formerly Twitter), Nadella said, “Thank you, PM @narendramodi ji, for an inspiring conversation on India’s AI opportunity. To support the country’s ambitions, Microsoft is committing US$17.5B—our largest investment ever in Asia—to help build the infrastructure, skills, and sovereign capabilities needed for India’s AI first future.”
To which the Prime Minister responded by tweeting, “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.”
Detailing its plans, Microsoft said that one of the key priorities of their 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,” it said, adding, “We will also continue to expand our three existing operational data center regions in Chennai, Hyderabad and Pune.”
Microsoft further introduced Sovereign Public Cloud and Sovereign Private Cloud for Indian customers. “With Sovereign Public Cloud now available in India, organizations can leverage a prescriptive architecture for deploying workloads in Azure with built-in compliance guardrails using Sovereign Landing Zones, do policy enforcement, and apply governance controls,” it said, adding, “Sovereign Public Cloud is now available from Microsoft’s Indian regions, while Sovereign Private Cloud, powered by Azure Local, will support both connected and disconnected operations in customers or our partner’s data centers.”
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).