Microsoft has given big information on investment in AI. Top officials of the company have said that even after 2026, Microsoft will continue to invest money in building AI-ready data centers in India. Besides, hiring of AI engineers will also be continued so that new and better technical services can be developed.
Microsoft India President Puneet Chandok said that this year and next year the company is going to invest a total of 3 billion dollars i.e. about 25 thousand crore rupees in India. Under this plan, our huge data center in Hyderabad will be operational by June 2026, which will be one of the largest data centers in the entire region. Apart from this, we already have data centers in Mumbai, Pune and Chennai and in collaboration with Reliance, we are also creating two Jio-Azure regions in Maharashtra and Gujarat.
AI data center will be built in India even after 2026
Puneet Chandok said that all the AI is completely ready for the data center and till now we have invested money only here. But this investment is not a one-time investment, it is going to be continuous. Even after 2026, we will continue to invest more money in India. Next week we will talk about this investment in more depth.
Microsoft India President Puneet Chandok has told in a special conversation with Mint that the company’s Global CEO and Chairman Satya Nadella is going to visit India from 10 to 12 December. Nadella is going to make many big announcements regarding AI infrastructure in this tour.
15 billion dollars will be spent to build data center
Meanwhile, on October 14, Google, along with Adani Group and Airtel, had announced to invest $ 15 billion i.e. about Rs 1.25 lakh crore to build a huge 1 GW AI data center in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh. Chandok clearly refused to say anything on competitors like Google, and he also said that even with the advent of AI, Microsoft will not reduce the hiring of people in India, hiring will continue as before.
AI engineers will be hired
He also said that we already have 22,000 AI engineers in India and we will hire more people. Also, we look at AI skills first while hiring. And they also give training to the old employees, one whole day every month is kept only for learning AI. At present, 420 jobs are vacant on the Microsoft India website and out of these, 92 percent i.e. 385 posts require knowledge of AI, be it engineering, sales or any other work.
Puneet Chandok further said that with the advent of AI, all the jobs will not be eliminated, but the boring and repetitive work will be done by machines and new value jobs will be created for the people. This change has started from now, hence now small degrees i.e. micro degrees have also started coming in AI so that people can learn quickly and get a new job.
In the financial year 2025, Microsoft India did a total business of Rs 28,755 crore and earned a profit of Rs 1,245 crore. Meaning the company is earning a lot of money in India and is also investing a lot.
Continues its long term partnership with OpenAI
This time, Microsoft India has increased its business by 27 percent and profit by 39 percent compared to last year. The company is continuing its long-term partnership with OpenAI and is providing AI services like ChatGPT to Indian customers through Azure and Copilot. Puneet Chandok told that now Microsoft’s AI service is being used on a very large scale in India, not just in testing but in real work.
According to him, more than 1000 big customers in India are using Microsoft Azure OpenAI. In this, Apollo Hospital is running copilot to help doctors, State Bank of India is running it to solve customer queries and Physics is running copilot to teach lakhs of children through AI. Chandok says that this is not just a trial, but the entire business is now running on AI, which means that the roots of AI have become deep in India.
Although Microsoft is making good progress in AI and cloud services, it is still lagging behind Amazon Web Services (AWS) in the cloud market in India and around the world. According to last month’s Synergy Research, AWS’s share in the Indian cloud market is 29 percent, while Microsoft Azure’s is 21 percent. Nevertheless, experts believe that Microsoft is playing a very important role in the race of AI adoption in India because the company has been present here for years and its cloud network is very large.
According to veteran AI analyst Kashyap Kompella, Indian companies consider Microsoft to be the most secure and trustworthy, especially in terms of data security and regulations. In the last one year, instead of building its own big AI model, Microsoft partnered with OpenAI, which also attracted some criticism, but now that big companies have started making full use of AI, Microsoft is going to get the most business.
Similarly, in June, TCS has also expanded its partnership with Microsoft so that it can provide enterprise level AI services to its clients. Meaning Microsoft remains a trusted partner of AI in India.
