Google stated it will construct a brand new undersea cable from India, and chip large Nvidia on Wednesday introduced a partnership with a computing firm as tech giants rushed to announce offers and investments at a worldwide AI convention in New Delhi.
This week’s AI Affect Summit is the fourth annual gathering to debate the way to handle quickly evolving know-how, and a chance for India to boost its profile in a fast-growing discipline.
“India is on a rare trajectory in the case of AI, and we need to be a companion,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai informed reporters because the US firm introduced plans to extend connectivity with the South Asian nation.
New direct undersea connections from India to Singapore, South Africa and Australia can be constructed, enabling sooner connections as demand for computing energy, together with AI, will increase, the corporate stated.
The transfer is a part of a $15 billion funding Google introduced in October to construct its largest AI information middle hub outdoors america in Visakhapatnam, a port metropolis in southeastern Andhra Pradesh state.
Additionally on Wednesday, California-based Nvidia, the world’s most precious firm, stated it will companion with three Indian cloud computing suppliers to supply superior processors for information facilities that may prepare and run AI techniques.
Dozens of world leaders and ministerial delegations are in New Delhi to take part within the summit, the place they’ll talk about the alternatives and threats posed by AI, from job losses to misinformation.
Final yr, India jumped to 3rd place, overtaking South Korea and Japan, in a worldwide rating of AI competitiveness calculated yearly by researchers at Stanford College.
However regardless of large infrastructure plans and lofty innovation ambitions, specialists say the nation has an extended method to go to match america and China.
The AI convention has introduced a flurry of offers, with IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw saying on Tuesday that India expects to take a position greater than $200 billion within the subsequent two years, together with round $90 billion that has already been dedicated.
Mumbai-based cloud and information middle supplier L&T on Wednesday stated it can collaborate with NVIDIA to construct a facility billed as “India’s largest gigawatt-scale AI manufacturing facility.”
“We’re laying the muse for a world-class AI infrastructure that can gasoline India’s development,” NVIDIA president Jensen Huang stated in a press release, with out disclosing the funding quantity.
Nvidia can also be working with different Indian AI infrastructure corporations similar to Yotta. Yotta introduced a $2 billion cope with a US firm to supply 20,000 top-end AI processors.
Nvidia’s Huang won’t be attending the AI summit, however high US tech figures can be attending, together with OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Meta’s chief AI officer Alexandr Wang, and Microsoft founder Invoice Gates.
Microsoft stated it will make investments $50 billion over the following decade to speed up the adoption of AI in creating nations, whereas US synthetic intelligence startup Anthropic and Indian IT large Infosys introduced they’d develop AI brokers for the telecom trade.
World leaders, together with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, French President Emmanuel Macron and Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, are anticipated to situation statements over the weekend on how they intend to deal with issues raised by AI know-how.
However specialists say the occasion’s broad focus and imprecise guarantees at earlier international AI summits in France, South Korea and the UK imply concrete guarantees are unlikely to materialize.
Nick Persistence, AI follow lead at tech analysis group Futurum, informed AFP that the non-binding declaration might nonetheless “set the tone for what acceptable AI governance seems like”.
However “the largest AI corporations are rolling out capabilities at a tempo that makes an 18-month legislative cycle appear glacial,” Persistence stated.
“So the query is whether or not governments can converge shortly sufficient to create significant guardrails earlier than corporations themselves set de facto requirements.”
issued – February 19, 2026 9:15am IST
