India’s AI dividend must reach everyone: Microsoft CEO

Seattle: Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella has urged technology leaders to ensure artificial intelligence reaches farmers, businesses and communities across India, saying its promise will depend on how widely people can use it and contribute to its development.

Addressing the Ideas4India forum in Seattle on September 17, Nadella said the benefits of a general-purpose technology should extend across countries and sectors. He coupled that call with an emphasis on national sovereignty, control over knowledge and human oversight.

“It will only happen when all of the world can both benefit from and contribute to this knowledge,” he said.

The Consulate General of India convened the Indian American Tech CEOs Forum, bringing together more than 40 Indian-origin chief executives and chief technology officers. Participants represented companies working in AI, quantum computing, semiconductors, aerospace, cloud infrastructure and enterprise software.

Nadella illustrated AI’s potential through a demonstration he had seen in Delhi. An Indian developer had combined a GPT model with language services to help a rural farmer seek information about a government scheme through WhatsApp.

The demonstration allowed the farmer to converse in a local language. The system explained access to a subsidy and attempted to help complete the required paperwork.

For Nadella, the significance lay in giving an ordinary person greater ability to obtain an entitlement. He said the experience helped shape his understanding of what AI could do beyond the technology industry.

He urged the community to think about the wider ecosystem developing around advanced AI. Its impact, he said, would depend on reaching businesses of different sizes and sectors throughout the economy.

That expansion also required countries and companies to retain control over their knowledge.

“Countries need to have control of their knowledge,” Nadella said.

He argued that participation should allow countries and businesses to feel secure, without becoming subject to another entity’s technological frontier. Governance and control would therefore need to be more widely distributed.

Nadella also said that India’s AI opportunity must involve creating distinctive products and services for the world, while urging professionals to reconsider their skills as artificial intelligence changes how work gets done.

He questioned whether India’s next phase of growth would follow the same path as its earlier development. He described that earlier trajectory as largely one of catching up.

The task now, he suggested, was to identify India’s competitive advantage in an era of increasingly abundant intelligence and turn it into a contribution with global reach.

“We’ve not yet had that breakthrough,” he said.

He also recalled joining Microsoft as a programme manager in 1992. For roughly the following decade, he said, the basic nature of that job had changed relatively little, despite technologies coming and going.

His point was that experience alone could not substitute for understanding new ways of working. Professionals needed direct familiarity with how tasks were performed, including how results were evaluated.

To illustrate the scale of adjustment, Nadella asked his audience to imagine moving from an early-1980s workplace into the late 1990s. Preparing a forecast before the widespread use of email, spreadsheets and digital documents was a different undertaking from doing it afterwards.

The same need to understand changed processes applied to people entering education and those already employed, he said. Existing specialisations would have to be reconsidered through practical experience.

“You can’t just say the word,” he said.

India’s Ambassador to the United States, Vinay Kwatra, placed practical development needs at the centre of the discussion. He said AI adoption in India would depend on useful outcomes and on what society and infrastructure could support.

“So I think all questions on AI get answered on outcome at the level of society,” Kwatra said.

Kwatra reaffirmed India’s commitment to an AI mission anchored in inclusivity, openness, sovereignty, democratised access, safety and trust.

The forum followed the India AI Impact Summit 2026. Organisers said participants proposed cooperation in AI infrastructure, data centres, semiconductor design and manufacturing, quantum research, skills, aerospace and advanced manufacturing. Several companies represented at the meeting maintain substantial engineering, research and business operations in India.

The consulate cited Microsoft’s announced $17.5 billion investment in India during 2026–2029 for cloud and AI infrastructure, skills and operations. It also cited Amazon’s announced $48 billion investment during 2026–2030, including AWS data centre expansion in Mumbai and Hyderabad, and Costco’s planned first Global Capability Centre in Hyderabad.

–IANS