Microsoft to Invest $17.5B in India for AI by 2029

Microsoft will invest $17.5 billion in India to expand AI and cloud, a four-year push that underscores how central the country has become in the global race to build advanced computing capacity. Announced during CEO Satya Nadella’s visit to New Delhi on December 9, 2025, the plan marks the company’s largest-ever investment in Asia.

What Microsoft Announced

The commitment spans calendar years 2026 through 2029 and centers on new and expanded data center regions, AI infrastructure and workforce programs. A new hyperscale cloud region in Hyderabad is slated to go live in mid-2026, alongside continued build-outs in Chennai, Hyderabad and Pune. Microsoft also outlined new sovereign cloud options tailored to India’s regulatory needs and reiterated that it already employs more than 22,000 people in the country. The India plan forms the largest piece of a broader package of AI outlays the company detailed on December 9, including additional investments in Canada. The India pledge is Microsoft’s biggest in Asia.

Why It Matters

India offers the scale big tech needs: hundreds of millions of internet users, a deep developer base and an active public-sector digitization agenda. Nadella framed the spending as aimed at building the infrastructure, skills and sovereign capabilities for an “AI-first” future. It also follows a $3 billion Microsoft commitment earlier in 2025 and comes after other U.S. giants stepped up in the market; Google, for instance, unveiled a $15 billion plan in October to develop an India AI hub and data-center capacity. Microsoft now aims to train 20 million Indians in AI skills by 2030, doubling a prior target.

What’s Next

Near term, attention turns to execution: bringing the Hyderabad region online by mid-2026, scaling power-hungry AI capacity and integrating new services for government platforms such as e-Shram and the National Career Service, which collectively reach hundreds of millions of workers. Expect continued competition among hyperscalers as demand for compute accelerates—alongside scrutiny of energy and water use, data sovereignty and whether massive AI spending delivers tangible productivity gains. Microsoft’s new capacity is intended to support high-performance AI workloads while keeping sensitive data within India’s borders.

Sources

• Microsoft unveils $23 billion in new AI investments with big focus on India — Reuters (December 9, 2025)
• Microsoft investing $17.5 billion in India for AI and cloud infrastructure — Associated Press (December 9, 2025)
• Microsoft invests US$17.5 billion in India to drive AI diffusion at population scale — Microsoft Newsroom (December 9, 2025)