Leading technology companies are pledging to invest substantial funds into India’s artificial intelligence sector during a pivotal summit that has drawn global leaders and top AI executives to the country.

As nations and corporations worldwide compete to advance AI technologies, significant investments are being made. Major players such as Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, and Alphabet are among those projected to collectively spend up to $700 billion on AI advancements this year.

Recently, Indian tech titan Reliance revealed plans to inject $110 billion into data centers and infrastructure, while another Indian conglomerate, Adani, has outlined a $100 billion investment strategy over the next ten years to expand its AI data center capabilities.

In addition to these developments, several U.S.-based technology firms made notable announcements.

At the Indian AI Impact Summit, Microsoft declared its intention to invest $50 billion in AI across the Global South by 2030. Furthermore, OpenAI and chip manufacturer AMD have partnered with Tata Group to enhance AI capabilities. Meanwhile, U.S. asset management firm Blackstone disclosed its involvement in a $600 million equity raise for Indian AI infrastructure company Neysa.

The summit, however, was not without controversy. Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, withdrew from the event following criticism over his past association with the late financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Additionally, an Indian university faced backlash for falsely claiming it had developed a robot dog, which was actually a commercially available product manufactured in China.

The AI Summit came as India pushes to be one of the world’s tech superpowers. The country has approved $18 billion of chip projects as it looks to bolster its local supply chain.

Meanwhile, the U.S. and India are edging towards a trade pact that would lower tariffs and increase economic cooperation between the two countries. Tech ties were deepened further at the event.

Representatives from both governments signed the Pax Silica agreement, a U.S.-led initiative launched by the Trump administration aimed at securing the global supply chain for silicon-based technologies.

The potential tech groups see in the market was evident in the roster of names in attendance. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, Anthropic boss Dario Amodei and Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis were all on the billing.

U.S. chip darling Nvidia announced it was expanding partnerships with venture capital firms in India as it looks to deepen exposure to promising tech companies being developed in the ecosystem.

While India’s public markets were booming towards the end of 2025, private capital is still lacking, Anirudh Suri, founding partner of the India Internet Fund, told CNBC.

“What we’ve not maybe seen as much of right now is venture capital and private equity money to come in to invest in Indian entrepreneurs in the AI space,” he said.

While India is seen as lagging behind the likes of the U.S. and China at the frontier of AI development, Microsoft President Brad Smith told CNBC that this could change in certain domain-specific areas.

“If you look at the…engineering talent, you quickly conclude India too can be a place where models are developed,” he said. There will be a “variety of different DeepSeek moments” to come in the future and some of those will be in India, alongside places like China and other countries, Smith added.

But some say India is still playing catchup.

“India is making splashy attempts to kickstart its belated AI push, but it is doing so primarily by offering headline-grabbing sops without addressing many of the underlying difficulties of actually doing business in India,” Udith Sikand, senior emerging markets analyst at financial research firm Gavekal, told CNBC.