US tech giants Amazon.com Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google are to ramp up their investments in India as they seek to spur growth in a key market.
The move follows after a meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Joe Biden held with top CEOs, including of Amazon and Google, at the White House Friday, reported Bloomberg.
Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said that Google is investing $10 billion in India's digitisation fund, adding that PM Modi's vision for Digital India serves as a blueprint for other countries.
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said that Google will open a global financial-technology center in Gujarat International Finance Tech-City (GIFT City).
“It’ll cement India’s fin-tech leadership,” he said, referring to innovations such as Unified Payments Interface that allows people to use their smartphones as a tool for commerce, and Aadhaar. “We’re going to build on that foundation and take it globally,” he added.
Google will also bring its artificial intelligence chatbot Bard to more Indian languages, Pichai said.
Google has previously said it is developing an AI model that would be able to handle more than 100 Indian languages across speech and text, a drive that would widen internet access beyond the country’s urban English-speaking minority.
Amazon.com Inc said on Friday it will take its investments in India to $26 billion by 2030, adding $6.5 billion in new planned investments in an announcement made after CEO Andy Jassy met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the United States.
The announcement follows Amazon's cloud computing unit Amazon Web Services (AWS) saying last month it will invest 1.06 trillion rupees ($12.9 billion) in the country by the end of 2030.
Earlier, Amazon had announced a $6.5 billion investment plan, largely to boost its e-commerce business
India remains a high priority market for most big US internet firms such as Meta Platforms Inc., Amazon, Google and Twitter, but one where they’ve all had to face regulatory headaches.
A slew of economic deals were announced during Modi’s visit to the US, including Micron Technology Inc. to invest more than $800 million toward a $2.75 billion semiconductor assembly and testing facility in India.
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