Microsoft’s biggest data center in India \u200bis on track to open \u200bby mid-2026, its country head said on Tuesday, as \u200bthe tech giant spends heavily to bolster its position in one of the world’s largest markets for artificial intelligence services.<\/p>\n
There’s “massive demand” for Azure cloud services<\/a> and the $30-a-month \u200cCopilot 365 \u2060AI assistant \u2060in the country, Puneet Chandok, president, Microsoft India and South Asia, told Reuters.<\/p>\n Like rivals \u200bAlphabet and Amazon, Microsoft sees India as a potentially profitable market for AI thanks \u200bto its more than 1 billion internet users and deep tech talent.<\/p>\n Tapping that market is crucial as it looks to prove to investors \u200bthat its massive bet on AI will \u2060pay off.<\/p>\n The \u200ccompany announced late last year that it would invest $17.5 \u200bbillion in \u200bIndia, its biggest outlay in Asia, on top of \u2060the $3 billion pledged at the start of 2025.<\/p>\n That includes \u200ba new data center in the southern tech \u200bhub of 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 \u200cdisclosing exact capacity.<\/p>\n The new capacity will serve a growing customer base for AI services in India<\/a>. Microsoft counts IT giants Infosys<\/a>, Cognizant and Tata Consultancy \u2060Services among Copilot customers, with about 50,000 licenses each.<\/p>\n Chandok also said the India operations are contributing to AI features Microsoft is rolling out globally. \u200bThe company employs more than 22,000 people in the country across cities.<\/p>\n Hiring staff to develop the features is getting tougher as demand exceeds supply, causing a “war for talent,” Chandok said.<\/p>\n “The challenges in India are the same as everywhere else in the world.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Microsoft’s biggest data center in India \u200bis on track to open \u200bby mid-2026, its country head said on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44162,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[26876,26878,420,22121,7853,416,26877,9872,320,7852,26875],"class_list":["post-44161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-microsoft","tag-ai-services-in-india","tag-ai-talent-in-india","tag-azure","tag-azure-cloud-services","tag-azure-copilot","tag-copilot","tag-copilot-365-ai-assistant","tag-infosys","tag-microsoft","tag-microsoft-copilot","tag-microsoft-india-data-centre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44161","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=44161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44161\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}