India bets big on AI
Big Tech descends on New Delhi with a flurry of deals, announcements and product launches
Welcome back—it was artificial intelligence week in India as the country’s five day AI Summit took place, inaugurated by PM Narendra Modi.
India put on a show that got global attention and validation from tech’s biggest names, from old guard names like Microsoft and Google to new powers OpenAI, Anthropic and more. Politically, the country is navigating the tricky corridor of relationships with China and the US.
The most viral moment of the week was OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei seemingly refusing to join hands as part of a group photo, though Altman played it down as confusion. Getting to business, both companies increased their already sizable commitments to the Indian market and generally India put itself on the global AI map.
Altman had already revealed that India is OpenAI’s second largest market with 100 million users, with nearly half of ChatGPT’s usage coming from users aged 18-24. On that note, OpenAI is making a big push into education after it partnered with six educational institutions as part of its goal to reach more than 100,000 students in the next year.
The company was busy penning strategic deals that include teaming up with Pine Labs to enable agentic commerce by uniting its APIs with the fintech company’s payment stack. It also partnered with Reliance to bring conversational search to JioHotstar, it is working with Tata Group on AI-ready data centre capacity and it will become the first customer of India’s Tata Consultancy Services’ data centre business.
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OpenAI already has an India office, and it said it will expand its presence to cover Mumbai and Bengaluru by the end of the year. Not to be outdone, Anthropic opened its first office in India in Bengaluru, its second in Asia after Tokyo.
Amodei said Anthropic’s ARR from India has doubled since October. We know the company’s focus isn’t on consumers, like OpenAI, and Anthropic struck enterprise deals with Air India and Cognizant. It also announced a partnership with Infosys to develop AI solutions for telecom and financial services.
A lot of announcements were focused around infrastructure. India’s technology minister said the country expects to draw in more than $200 billion in AI investments over the next two years. Microsoft said it remains on track to invest $50 billion across the ‘Global South,’ which prominently features India, and Google announced new fibre optic routes.
On the venture capital side, US fund General Catalyst pledged to invest $5 billion in India. That’s its largest commitment to the country ever, and it will cross sectors including AI, defence, healthcare, industrials and fintech.
That was echoed by Peak XV, the fund formerly known as Sequoia India and Southeast Asia, closed a new $1.3 billion fund. This is its first as an independent firm, and the achievement is impressive and certainly helped by huge IPO exits last year, as I noted in the ATR WhatsApp channel.
Meanwhile, Lightspeed closed a $9 billion fund in December and it is doubling down on AI in India, revealing that 60% of its deals in the past year have been for AI startups.
But the week wasn’t just about international companies or cash, it was an opportunity to showcase India’s progress.
Sarvam, a 2-year-old startup that collaborates with the government to develop AI systems focused on India, had a big week after it unveiled a chat app for consumers in India. Under the hood, it also launched a new family of LLMs that are compute-efficient and open source. The goal is to offer a viable alternative to US and Chinese rivals which dominate the market.
Initial deployments will cover low-cost feature phones, in-car systems and Sarvam’s own smart glasses. Its Indus chat app will be the main touch point to reach new users and offer a local alternative.
Sarvam’s strategy reflects India’s broader focus on developing efficient and cost-effective local AI models, challenging the global pioneers without breaking the bank.
Finally, if you only read one thing on the summit, let it be this: India’s AI Wedding Buffet: Generous Portions, Political Economy Heartburn.
Have a great rest of the week—we’ll see you on Thursday for our next ATR original story,
Jon
China
Nearly $1B in US government funding went to research projects involving Chinese defence-linked labs, according to a new report that puts the total at $943.5M and says existing security controls have failed to curb sensitive collaborations link
Moonshot AI is aiming for a $10B valuation in an expanded funding round, fresh from raising $500M at a $4.3B valuation and securing over $700M in commitments for the first tranche of this new round link
ByteDance said it will rein in its AI video generator, Seedance, after multiple Hollywood studios threatened legal action link
ByteDance is recruiting for nearly 100 US-based roles within its AI unit, Seed, showing it plans to compete with US rivals despite national security scrutiny link
Alibaba launched Qwen 3.5, a new artificial intelligence model built to handle complex tasks autonomously, it claims performance and cost gains that outperform US rivals on several benchmarks link
China’s most-watched TV show, the annual CCTV Spring Festival gala, showcased the country’s cutting-edge tech, including a choreographed dance routine featuring humanoid robots link
Unitree Robotics, whose robots were used in the New Year show, plans to ship as many as 20,000 humanoid robots this year, up from about 5,500 in 2025, according to its CEO link
Polymarket is targeting China-based users after hiring Mandarin speakers and rolling out Lunar New Year wagers, even while the site remains blocked in China and despite Beijing’s strict online gambling ban link
China’s effort to build medical technology champions to rival US players such as Elon Musk’s Neuralink is gaining traction, with Shanghai-based NeuroXess advancing to human trials just years after its founding link
The problems piling up at fast-fashion giant Shein — Regulatory probes and the ending of customs loopholes pose big challenges, but its business model is highly resilient link
Texas sued TP-Link, alleging it allows China to hack into routers link
The US is planning Peace Corps-style “Tech Corps” to counter China’s AI exports by sending volunteers abroad to promote American AI models link
China’s supply chain is stepping up investments in liquid cooling technology as the global AI build-out pushes data centre power densities to levels that air cooling can no longer efficiently handle link
India
Data analytics company Fractal, which became India’s first AI unicorn in 2022, raised $313M in its Mumbai IPO; its shares fell 5% amid a weak Indian IPO market link
AI infrastructure startup Neysa raised up to $600M in primary equity from Blackstone and other investors link
The India Deep Tech Alliance will unveil expanded backing for AI and deeptech, with members committing over $2.5B across five years link
Nvidia is ramping up its India push, supplying Blackwell Ultra GPUs to Yotta Data Services and E2E Networks as it backs the country’s bid to scale infrastructure link
Nvidia also partnered with VC firms including Peak XV, Z47, Elevation Capital, Nexus Venture Partners and Accel India to identify and back local AI startups link
Abu Dhabi-based G42 and US chipmaker Cerebras are building an 8-exaflop supercomputer in India link
Billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s conglomerate will plow as much as $110B over 7 years into AI infrastructure link
C2i Semiconductors, which is building plug and play power systems for AI data centres, raised $15M link
Razorpay and AI startup Replit formed a strategic partnership to help developers monetise their applications link
LLM operations startup Portkey raised $15M from Elevation Capital and Lightspeed to expand its platform and sales efforts link
Vibe-coding startup Emergent said it surpassed $100M in ARR, doubling in the past month as more than 6M users across 190 countries link
India plans to move from 28-nanometer chips to advanced 2-nanometer production within years, IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said link
India is in talks with social media companies on possible age-based curbs, as global momentum builds to restrict children’s access to addictive digital platforms, Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said link
Fixed income investment startup Stable Money raised $25M led by Peak XV Partners link
Skyroot Aerospace is seeking to raise $150M to $200M to fund its next phase of growth, a deal that could value the rocket maker at $1B link
Supply-chain financing startup Progcap is in advanced talks to close a $100M equity funding round, according to sources link
Southeast Asia
We have seen agentic commerce begin to take off in China, now Sea wants to explore possibilities in Southeast Asia after it inked a new strategic partnership with Google to develop AI tools for e-commerce and gaming, its core businesses link
Philippine fintech firm Maya, backed by the country’s top telco, Tencent and KKR, is reportedly planning an IPO in the US that could raise $500M-$1B link
Vietnam is experiencing a slump in investments in startups, which is being attributed to a catalogue of cross-border challenges link
Indonesian creators are fueling the rise of Facebook’s new content monetization program, which has grown from 3M to 12M users in a year in response to the growth of TikTok and YouTube Shorts link
Vietnam said US President Donald Trump told Communist Party chief To Lam he will remove the nation from the US’s list of restrictions on advanced technologies link
Japan
Sony claims to have developed technology to trace when copyrighted songs are used to train AI music models, enabling songwriters to seek compensation link
Sony is shutting down Bluepoint Games, the PlayStation subsidiary responsible for developing remakes of video games such as Demon’s Souls link
Japan‘s premium video-on-demand sector achieved $7.2B in total revenue during 2025, marking a 15% year-over-year increase, according to a new report from Media Partners Asia link
A planned $33B natural gas facility in Ohio, backed by Japan and led by SoftBank subsidiary SB Energy, would be the largest of its kind in the US, with capacity of about 9.2 gigawatts, enough to power millions of homes, according to US officials link
Rest of Asia
A US federal court has sentenced a Ukrainian man to 5 years in prison for enabling North Korean workers to use stolen American identities to land jobs at dozens of US companies link