BENGALURU, 11 NOV 

Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella on Thursday announced major commitments to India’s AI landscape, including large-scale infrastructure expansion and strategic partnerships with the country’s top IT firms. 

Microsoft announced partnerships with Cognizant, Infosys, TCS and Wipro, each of which will deploy over 50,000 Microsoft Copilot licences, together exceeding 2,00,000. This marks one of the largest enterprise AI rollouts globally. The collaboration aims to transform workflows across delivery, HR, finance, sales and customer engagement by embedding agentic AI systems capable of autonomous decision-making and insight generation.

Nadella said Microsoft will invest USD 17.5 billion—its largest investment in Asia—to strengthen cloud and AI capabilities across India.

He confirmed that a new sustainable data centre region will go live in 2026, adding to Microsoft’s expanding Azure footprint across Central, West and South India, alongside its partnership with Jio. Emphasising digital sovereignty and cybersecurity, Nadella said security must evolve alongside sovereign cloud options, noting that Microsoft analyses “trillions of daily signals” to protect its platforms.

Microsoft will also scale its skilling initiatives, aiming to train 20 million Indians in AI, while noting India’s rising prominence in global developer communities such as GitHub.

Microsoft India & South Asia President Puneet Chandok said the four IT giants are “setting the global pace” in AI adoption, moving from pilots to full-scale deployment of Copilot across everyday operations.