US tech giants announce major India deals at AI summit

UAE – India – (Web Desk) – At a global AI summit in New Delhi, major US technology companies unveiled new partnerships and infrastructure plans in India. Google announced it will lay new subsea internet cables connecting India with Singapore, South Africa, and Australia to improve global connectivity and support rising demand for AI computing.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai said India has huge potential in artificial intelligence and emphasized that Google wants to play a key role in its growth. The company’s cable project is part of its previously announced $15 billion investment to build its largest AI data center hub outside the United States. The facility will be located in Visakhapatnam, a coastal city in Andhra Pradesh.

Meanwhile, chipmaking leader Nvidia revealed new partnerships with three Indian cloud service providers. These collaborations aim to supply advanced processors that will help data centers develop and operate AI technologies more efficiently.

The AI Impact Summit, now in its fourth year, has brought together global leaders, ministers, and technology experts to discuss both the benefits and risks of artificial intelligence, including concerns about job losses and misinformation.

At the AI impact summit our message is clear: we believe India is going to have an extraordinary trajectory with AI, and we want to be a partner.

To help, we have launched new America-India Connect subsea cable routes building on our $15B investment in India’s infrastructure,… pic.twitter.com/pb0xH9XbgX

— Sundar Pichai (@sundarpichai) February 18, 2026

India’s growing influence in AI is already visible. Researchers from Stanford University ranked the country third in global AI competitiveness last year, ahead of Japan and South Korea. However, experts say India still needs significant progress to compete with global leaders like China and the United States.

India’s IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw also shared optimistic projections, saying the country expects over $200 billion in AI-related investments within the next two years, including $90 billion that has already been pledged. The summit has clearly positioned India as a fast-rising hub in the global AI race.

Mumbai cloud and data centre provider L&T said Wednesday it was teaming up with Nvidia to build what it touted as “India’s largest gigawatt-scale AI factory”.

“We are laying the foundation for world-class AI infrastructure that will power India’s growth,” said Nvidia boss Jensen Huang in a statement that did not put a figure on the investment.

Nvidia is also working with other Indian AI infrastructure players such as Yotta, which announced a $2 billion deal with the US company that will provide it with 20,000 top-end AI processors.

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Nvidia’s Huang is not attending the AI summit but other top US tech figures joining include OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Meta chief AI officer Alexandr Wang and Microsoft founder Bill Gates.

Microsoft said it was investing $50 billion this decade to boost AI adoption in developing countries, while US artificial intelligence startup Anthropic and Indian IT giant Infosys said they would build AI agents for the telecoms industry.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other world leaders including French President Emmanuel Macron and Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva are expected to deliver a statement at the end of the week about how they plan to address concerns raised by AI technology.

But experts say the broad focus of the event and vague promises made at previous global AI summits in France, South Korea and Britain mean that concrete commitments are unlikely.

Nick Patience, practice lead for AI at tech research group Futurum, told AFP that nonbinding declarations could still “set the tone for what acceptable AI governance looks like”.

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But “the largest AI companies deploy capabilities at a pace that makes 18-month legislative cycles look glacial,” Patience said.

“So it’s a case of whether governments can converge fast enough to create meaningful guardrails before de facto standards are set by the companies themselves.”