Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella said India could have the world’s largest developer community by 2030, showing the country’s growing pool of technology workers as a major advantage i
Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella said India could have the world’s largest developer community by 2030, showing the country’s growing pool of technology workers as a major advantage in the AI race. He made the comments on September 17 at an India-US technology forum in Seattle attended by more than 40 Indian-origin CEOs and CTOs from companies including Microsoft, Amazon, OpenAI, Anthropic and Intel.
Nadella’s comments come as US technology companies pour more money into India’s AI infrastructure. Microsoft plans to invest $17.5 billion in India from 2026 to 2029, its biggest investment in Asia, while Amazon plans to invest $48 billion between 2026 and 2030, including expanding AWS data centres in Mumbai and Hyderabad.
“AI must stay under human control.” — Satya Nadella
As AI becomes more powerful, the goal shouldn’t be to replace human judgment.
It should be to amplify human intelligence while
keeping humans accountable and in control. pic.twitter.com/MEZzVlX8we
— Raksha Devi (@Rakshaweb3) September 18, 2026
The biggest implication is that India could capture a larger share of the value created by AI, rather than mainly providing engineers for foreign companies. India’s Global Capability Centres are already moving into product development, AI engineering and research instead of traditional back-office work. A 2026 Nasscom-Zinnov report found that global companies are giving their Indian centres more responsibility for AI products, platforms and infrastructure.
That could change the type of companies and jobs India produces. More experienced engineers working on AI products can create a stronger pool of founders, technical executives and specialised startups over time. There is already strong demand for experienced AI workers, with Indian AI startups competing for engineers as companies move from AI experiments to actual deployments. Indian companies are already reporting a shortage of workers with the specialized skills needed to build and deploy AI systems, meaning the next challenge is turning a large developer population into highly skilled AI talent.
India is becoming one of the biggest sources of new software developers globally, and AI is helping push that growth because coding tools are lowering the barrier for people entering software development. India already has 21.9 million developers on GitHub, after adding more than 5.2 million in a year. GitHub expects that number to reach 57.5 million by 2030, compared with 54.7 million in the US. GitHub COO Kyle Daigle has described India’s developer growth as a major investment opportunity, while the company says India is already its largest source of open-source contributors.
The gap is also becoming visible in how companies are investing. Microsoft is putting $17.5 billion into India between 2026 and 2029, covering cloud and AI infrastructure, operations and training. The company also plans to train 20 million Indians in AI skills by 2030. Amazon has committed another $48 billion through 2030, including more data-centre capacity.
India’s developer numbers do not mean it is leading every part of Asia’s AI market. China is taking a much more capital-intensive route, combining AI companies with chips, data centres and government funding. Asian venture investment reached $50.8 billion in the second quarter of 2026, with China accounting for $35.1 billion. AI attracted much of that money, including a $7.4 billion raise for DeepSeek and $3 billion for ByteDance. Japan is taking a more selective approach, with government and corporate money going into areas such as semiconductors, manufacturing and deep technology. KPMG says Japan’s government-backed Rapidus semiconductor project received another $943 million in the quarter.
Singapore does not have India’s developer population or China’s scale, but it is positioning itself as a place where global companies can build and test AI systems. Microsoft, Google, and Alibaba have expanded AI operations there, while the country is using its strengths in finance, data centres, research, and business infrastructure to attract AI investment. That leaves Asia with several different AI models. India’s real test is whether its growing developer base can produce globally important AI companies rather than mainly supplying talent to companies headquartered elsewhere.
Meanwhile, Indian AI startup Sarvam announced plans to build a foundational AI model with more than one trillion parameters, becoming the largest AI project to date. The company said the model is being developed entirely in India and is intended for coding, cybersecurity, scientific research, simulations and other enterprise workloads.
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