US President Donald Trump’s announcement of the $500-billion Stargate project to build AI infrastructure in the country is being viewed by experts as a wake-up call for India to urgently advance its efforts toward achieving self-reliance in the artificial intelligence (AI) sector.
Few policy experts see the move by the US as a way to weaponise technology by starting to control everything, from large language models (LLMs), which are owned by US companies, and infrastructure around the same.
Stargate is a joint venture between SoftBank, OpenAI and Oracle to create data centres. The same is expected to generate over 100,000 jobs in the country. The venture will be initially funded by SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle and MGX. In a blog post, OpenAI said SoftBank will be its lead partner for Stargate, with the latter’s boss, Masayoshi Son, as the chairman. While the US giant will look after the operations, the Japanese major will have the financial responsibility.
“For strategic autonomy, we must create our own AI doctrine and start controlling our own data strongly. Also, we must create our own domestic hardware for data centres as it’s going to be very difficult to control our data,” said Ajai Chowdhry, founder of HCL and chairman of EPIC Foundation & mission governing board of National Quantum Mission of India.
According to Chowdhry, the government and the industry must work together to create the strategy for AI. “What was thought of yesterday is no longer valid. It should be treated as an emergency,” he added.
India is currently executing the Rs 10,000-crore IndiaAI mission, which includes creating compute capacities, datasets platform, innovation centre, safe and trusted AI, application development initiative, among others. The government’s ambition is to build sovereign capability, which is to develop AI using its own infrastructure.
Officials in the ministry of electronics and IT (MeitY) said they are keeping a watch on the developments and will take decisions as needed.
Recently, the previous Biden government announced restrictions on AI chip exports, which, once implemented, could cap the graphic processing units (GPUs) that other countries, including India, can import.
Experts said with the US trying to control key technology, such initiatives prompt the need for made-in-India GPUs, LLMs, as well as increase the corpus of the AI mission.
“A few of us, including key figures in healthcare and radiology AI, have been discussing how to kickstart a consortium that can tap into petabytes of patient data across the country, with the goal of developing India’s first frontier multimodal model for healthcare,” said Suvrankar Datta, AI researcher and consultant and MD Radiology at AIIMS, New Delhi.
According to Datta, the government, academia and industries must take bold steps to keep pace with the global AI race.
An industry executive, on the condition of anonymity, said the US private sector is financing Stargate. So, large domestic conglomerates like Reliance Industries, Adani Group, Tata, among others, can deploy funds and have an India-led AI project. It is not the responsibility of the government alone, the executive said.
“India has already took first steps towards creating a base layer for AI development and promotion through IndiaAI mission. However, looking at projects like Stargate, it is clear that a lot more needs to be done. While the government can provide the right conditions and policy for such projects, the financial and strategic resources need to be provided through a public-private partnership,” said Dhruv Garg, tech lawyer and partner at Indian Governance and Policy Project (IGAP).
The move by the US, however, is also seen as positive for the Indian professionals who can get exposure while working with companies like Nvidia, Arm, Microsoft, SoftBank, etc, and develop expertise.
“Learning from the Stargate Project, India could conceptualise and implement its own large-scale initiatives to strengthen its AI ecosystem,” said Ashok Chandak, president of India Electronics and Semiconductor Association (IESA).
