Alphabet Inc CEO Sundar Pichai on Wednesday unveiled an expansive India-focused strategy centred on artificial intelligence infrastructure, connectivity and skilling.
He announced subsea cable routes between India and the US to boost AI connectivity, and training initiatives for 20 million public servants and 11 million students.
Pichai met Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the sidelines of the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi and discussed collaboration to infuse AI across sectors, including health, agriculture, startups and multilingual access. Modi later said in a post on X that discussions focused on how Google can work with Indian students and professionals in the field of AI.
Speaking at a media event, Pichai said the previously announced $15 billion AI hub in Visakhapatnam would house a gigawatt-scale compute facility and an international subsea cable gateway, positioning India as a major AI infrastructure node.
Under the India-America Connect initiative, Google will establish a new international subsea gateway in Visakhapatnam, three subsea routes linking India to Singapore, South Africa and Australia, and four strategic fibre-optic paths to strengthen resilience and capacity between the US, India and multiple locations across the Southern Hemisphere.
“I believe India is going to have an extraordinary trajectory with AI, and we want to be a partner,” Pichai said, describing AI as “the biggest platform shift of our lifetime” and a tool to help countries like India leapfrog legacy gaps in healthcare, education and climate resilience.
Google also rolled out a series of skilling programmes, including the Google AI Professional Certificate for students and early-career professionals, a partnership with Karma Yogi Bharat to train 20 million public servants across 800 districts in 18-plus languages, and generative AI support for more than 10,000 Atal Tinkering Labs, reaching 11 million students.
The company announced a $30 million AI for Science Impact Challenge aimed at accelerating breakthroughs in health and life sciences, crisis resilience and environmental science.
Highlighting India’s strong AI adoption and optimism, Pichai said products such as Google AI Mode (AI-based search option), now available in 35 languages across 200 countries and territories, are seeing robust uptake, with Indian users among the highest adopters of voice and visual search. An enhanced real-time search model integrating voice and camera capabilities will be launched in the coming weeks.
The Gemini app, available in 10 Indian languages, counts India among its largest markets.
Citing a 2025 government AI Readiness Index, Pichai said India ranks in the top tier globally for public sector AI adoption, supported by its digital public infrastructure.
“AI is fundamentally shifting the pace of discovery, and I’m excited to see how we can continue accelerating science for real-world impact. From advancing quantum computing to predicting extreme weather, AI is giving us the tools to understand the universe in deeper ways and solve hard problems in science,” Pichai said, emphasising that Google has a “full-stack commitment to India”.
Responding to questions on domestic innovation, Pichai said India is already producing world-class firms such as Flipkart and Oyo, and pointed to local AI startupSarvam as evidence of advanced model development within the country.
Google DeepMind, the AI research subsidiary of Alphabet Inc, will partner with Indian government bodies and local institutions to unlock discoveries in science and education, Google said on Wednesday.
Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis struck a note of “cautious optimism”, saying AI is set to transform science and medicine, but asserted that managing its societal challenges will require international dialogue and cooperation.
Addressing the summit, Hassabis said the world was at a “threshold moment”, with artificial general intelligence, AI that can learn and improve autonomously, potentially on the horizon within the next five to eight years.
