Joe Biden and PM Modi met with some of the most powerful executives in Silicon Valley on Friday.
New Delhi:
Three US tech giants have committed to major investments in India following Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recently-concluded state visit to the western superpower. Amazon, Google, and Microsoft have announced capital investments and technological cooperation for the growth of Indian technology.
While Amazon has committed to investing an additional $15 billion in India over the next seven years, which will take the company’s total India investment across all businesses to $26 billion, Google has said it will open its global fintech operation centre in Gujarat.
Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella in his meeting with the Prime Minister discussed the power of technology, particularly Artificial Intelligence, to help improve the lives of Indians.
“India is home to one of the most vibrant developer and start-up ecosystems in the world, and Microsoft remains deeply committed to the growth of Indian technology – that will impact both India and markets across the globe,” a Microsoft statement said after the meeting.
Microsoft had last month launched Jugalbandi, a new generative AI-driven chatbot on mobile devices for government assistance, in India. It can understand questions in multiple languages, whether spoken or typed. It retrieves information on relevant programs – usually written in English – and relays it back in local language. The Jugalbandi AI assistant is powered by language models from AI4Bharat, a government-backed initiative, and reasoning models from Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service.
Google CEO Sundar Puchai said that he shared with the Prime Minister that Google is investing $10 billion in India’s digitisation fund. “We are announcing the opening of our global fintech operation centre in GIFT City, Gujarat,” news agency ANI quoted Mr Pichai as saying.
An Amazon statement said its CEO Andy Jassy and the PM spoke about supporting Indian startups, creating jobs, enabling exports, digitisation, and empowering individuals and small businesses to compete globally.
“Amazon has pledged to digitise 10 million small businesses, enable $20 billion in exports, and create 2 million jobs in India by 2025. Currently, Amazon India is on track to deliver on them, having already digitised over 6.2 million small businesses, enabled over $7 billion in exports, and created over 1.3 million direct and indirect jobs,” the company statement said.
PM Modi met captains of industry from various fields, including semiconductors, manufacturing, space, and start-ups, at the “Hi-Tech handshake” mega event at the White House in Washington DC on his last day of the US visit.
“In his remarks, Prime Minister underlined the immense potential of harnessing India-US tech cooperation for socio-economic growth. He also applauded the contribution of India’s talented youth in fostering a culture of innovation. President Biden called on CEOs to help expand India-US tech partnership to new fields including biotechnology and quantum,” a government release on the event said.
Among those present were Apple’s Tim Cook, Revathi Advaithi, CEO, Flex, Sam Altman, CEO, OpenAI, Mark Douglas, President and CEO, FMC Corporation, Microsoft chief Satya Nadella and Google’s Sundar Pichai.
Another key announcement, earlier during the PM’s visit, was Micron Technology, along with India Semiconductor Mission, saying it will build a semiconductor assembly and test facility in Gujarat at a cost of $2.75 billion.
In space sector, India has signed the Artemis Accords for space exploration. By the end of this year, NASA and ISRO are developing a strategic framework for human spaceflight cooperation.
PM Modi also met with SpaceX chief Elon Musk in New York on Tuesday.
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