Microsoft<\/a>‘s biggest data center in India is on track to open by mid-2026, its country \u200chead said on Tuesday, as the tech giant spends heavily to \u200cbolster its position in one of the world’s largest markets for artificial intelligence services.<\/p>\nThere’s “massive demand” for \u200bAzure cloud services and the $30-a-month Copilot 365 AI assistant in the country, Puneet Chandok, president, Microsoft India and South Asia, told Reuters.<\/p>\n
Like rivals Alphabet and Amazon, Microsoft sees India as a potentially profitable market for AI thanks to its more than \u200c1 billion internet users \u2060and deep tech talent.<\/p>\n
Tapping that market is crucial as it looks to prove to investors that its massive bet on AI \u2060will pay off.<\/p>\n
The company announced late last year that it would invest $17.5 billion in India, its biggest outlay in Asia, on top of the $3 billion pledged at \u200bthe start \u200bof 2025.<\/p>\n
That includes a new data \u200bcenter in the southern tech hub \u200cof Hyderabad, where Microsoft already has a significant presence.<\/p>\n
“We are the ones who are bringing this to life quickly, the fastest out of the gates,” Chandok said of the company’s data center build-out, adding that the Hyderabad facility would be its biggest in India without disclosing exact capacity.<\/p>\n
The new capacity will \u200cserve a growing customer base for AI services \u200bin India. Microsoft counts IT giants Infosys, Cognizant \u200band Tata Consultancy Services among \u200bCopilot customers, with about 50,000 licenses each.<\/p>\n
Chandok also said the \u200cIndia operations are contributing to AI \u200bfeatures Microsoft is rolling \u200bout globally. The company employs more than 22,000 people in the country across cities.<\/p>\n
Hiring staff to develop the features is getting tougher as \u200bdemand exceeds supply, causing \u200ca “war for talent,” Chandok said.<\/p>\n
“The challenges in India are the same as \u200beverywhere else in the world.”<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Aditya Soni and Abhirami \u200bG in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D’Silva)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Aditya Soni and Abhirami G May 19 (Reuters) – Microsoft‘s biggest data center in India is on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44099,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[420,7829,26857,85,1415,320,7828,26856],"class_list":["post-44098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-microsoft","tag-azure","tag-azure-ai","tag-country-head","tag-data-center","tag-india","tag-microsoft","tag-microsoft-ai","tag-microsoft-india"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44098"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44098\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}