India bids to attract over $200B in AI infrastructure investment by 2028

India has launched an aggressive drive to attract more than $200 billion in artificial-intelligence infrastructure investment over the next two years, aiming to position itself as a global hub for AI computing and applications at a time when capacity, capital, and regulation are becoming strategic assets.

The plans were outlined on Tuesday by India’s IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw (pictured above) at the Indian government-backed five-day AI Impact Summit in New Delhi. Senior executives from OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, and other global technology firms are attending the event. To attract more investment, the government is rolling out a mix of tax incentives, state-backed venture capital, and policy support to bring a larger share of the global AI value chain into India.

India’s pitch comes as U.S. technology giants, including Amazon, Google, and Microsoft,t have already committed about $70 billion to expand AI and cloud infrastructure in the country, giving New Delhi a base to argue that it can combine scale, cost advantages, and policy incentives to attract the next wave of global AI computing investment.

While the majority of the projected $200 billion is expected to flow into AI infrastructure — including datacentres, chips, and supporting systems, and factoring in the roughly $70 billion already pledged by Big Tech firms — Vaishnaw said the Indian government also expects an additional $17 billion to flow into deep-tech and AI applications. The goal, he indicated, is to move beyond infrastructure and capture a larger share of the value chain.

The effort is supported by recent policy moves aimed at making India a more attractive location for AI computing. These include long-term tax relief for export-oriented cloud services and a ₹100 billion (approximately $1.1 billion) government-backed venture program targeting high-risk areas such as AI and advanced manufacturing. Earlier this month, New Delhi also extended the period for which deep-tech companies qualify as startups to 20 years and raised the revenue threshold for startup-specific benefits to ₹3 billion (about $33.08 million).

“We have seen VCs committing funds for dtech startups,” Vaishnaw said at a press briefing on the sidelines of the AI Impact Summit in New Delhi. “We have seen VCs and other players committing funds for big solutions, big applications. We have seen VCs committing funds for further research in cutting-edge models.”

India also plans to scale its shared compute capacity under the IndiaAI Mission beyond its existing 38,000 GPUs, Vaishnaw said, with an additional 20,000 units set to be added in the coming weeks — a signal, he said, of the next phase of India’s AI strategy.

Looking ahead, Vaishnaw said the government is preparing a second phase of its AI Mission, with a stronger emphasis on research and development, innovation, and wider diffusion of AI tools. That would come alongside further expansion of shared compute capacity, as India tries to broaden access to AI infrastructure beyond a relatively small group of companies.

The plan also faces structural constraints, including access to reliable power and water for energy-intensive data centres, which highlight execution risks as India attempts to compress years of AI infrastructure build-out into a much shorter window.

Vaishnaw acknowledged the issues, noting that the government is aware of the pressure AI infrastructure will place on power and water resources. He pointed to India’s energy mix — with more than half of its installed generation capacity coming from clean sources — as an advantage as data centre demand rises.

Whether India can deliver on that vision will matter beyond its own borders, as companies seek new homes for AI computing amid rising costs, capacity constraints, and intensifying global competition.