India is hosting a four-day AI Impact Summit this week with the goal of attracting greater AI investment to the country. The event will be attended by executives from major AI labs and Big Tech companies, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Nvidia, Microsoft, Google, and Cloudflare, alongside various heads of state.
The summit expects 250,000 visitors. Notable attendees include Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Reliance Chairman Mukesh Ambani, and Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis. India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, is scheduled to deliver a joint speech with French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday.
Several key announcements and updates have emerged from the event. India has earmarked 1.1 billion dollars for its state-backed venture capital fund. This fund will invest in artificial intelligence and advanced manufacturing startups across the country.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman revealed that India accounts for more than 100 million weekly active ChatGPT users, a figure second only to the United States. He also noted that India has the most students using ChatGPT globally.
In a significant investment move, Blackstone has acquired a majority stake in the Indian AI startup Neysa as part of a 600 million dollar equity fundraise. Other investors include Teachers’ Venture Growth, TVS Capital, 360 ONE Asset, and Nexus Venture Partners. Neysa now plans to raise an additional 600 million dollars in debt and deploy more than 20,000 GPUs.
Bengaluru-based startup C2i, which is developing a power solution for data centers, raised 15 million dollars in a Series A funding round led by Peak XV. The round also saw participation from Yali Deeptech and TDK Ventures.
HCL CEO Vineet Nayyar stated that Indian IT companies will now prioritize profitability over job creation. These comments come as Indian IT stocks dip amid growing fears that AI will disrupt the traditional IT services sector.
Venture capitalist Vinod Khosla echoed this sentiment, predicting that industries like IT services and Business Process Outsourcing could “almost completely disappear” within five years due to AI. He advised that 250 million young people in India should instead focus on selling AI-based products and services to the world.
In a separate development, AMD announced a partnership with Tata Consultancy Services to develop rack-scale AI infrastructure based on AMD’s “Helios” platform.
Finally, Anthropic revealed it is opening its first office in India, located in Bengaluru. The company noted that India is the second-largest user of its Claude AI assistant after the United States.