Because the world’s high know-how executives converged on India’s AI Impression Summit this week, Google CEO Sundar Pichai pushed again on rising considerations round whether or not the tech business’s huge AI spending spree can ever repay.
“These are such leverage investments and drive so much growth and value,” Pichai stated in a briefing on the summit on Wednesday, including that the present AI buildout is transferring “10 times faster” than prior industrial revolutions. “I believe this is a transformational moment like that,” he stated.
Pichai pointed to surging Google Cloud demand as proof that returns are already materializing. “The investment makes sense given the economy we are seeing and the opportunities we see,” he stated. The feedback come weeks after Alphabet revealed it plans to spend between $175 billion and $185 billion in capital expenditure in 2026.
Pichai additionally introduced a contemporary spherical of investments in India on the Summit. When it comes to infrastructure, the corporate unveiled a brand new America-India Join Initiative—fiber-optic routes linking the U.S., India, and areas throughout the Southern Hemisphere—that builds on a earlier $15 billion AI infrastructure dedication. For analysis, Google launched a $30 million AI for Science Impression Problem to fund researchers globally utilizing AI to drive scientific breakthroughs. The corporate additionally introduced a brand new partnership between Google DeepMind and the Indian authorities to increase entry to frontier fashions for science and schooling.
Pichai stated that India was not only a market to be served however a co-builder of what comes subsequent. “India is going to be a full-stack player in AI,” he stated, including he anticipated “every sector, every workflow, to be transformed” by the tech.
The five-day India AI Impression Summit, which kicked off Monday, featured OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, and Meta’s Alexandr Wang alongside political leaders, together with French President Emmanuel Macron. Greater than 20 heads of state and representatives from over 60 nations had been anticipated to attend.
The gathering has additionally turn into a chance for AI firms to emphasise their presence in India. Anthropic introduced this week that India has turn into the second-largest marketplace for its Claude platform, whereas Altman wrote within the Occasions of India that the nation now accounts for 100 million weekly energetic ChatGPT customers, making it OpenAI’s second-largest person base after the U.S. Underpinning all of it is a Modi authorities push for a “global AI commons”—a shared repository of AI instruments targeted on schooling, well being and agriculture—a transfer that displays a broader nervousness that frontier AI improvement stays too concentrated within the arms of some American firms.
Be a part of us on the Fortune Office Innovation Summit Might 19–20, 2026, in Atlanta. The following period of office innovation is right here—and the outdated playbook is being rewritten. At this unique, high-energy occasion, the world’s most revolutionary leaders will convene to discover how AI, humanity, and technique converge to redefine, once more, the way forward for work. Register now.
