AI: Microsoft and Amazon are betting big, but where does India stand in the global race?

This week, tech giants Amazon and Microsoft pledged a staggering combined investment of over $50 billion in India, putting artificial intelligence (AI) in the spotlight.

Microsoft’s Satya Nadella announced his company’s largest ever investment in Asia – $17.5bn (£13.14bn) – “to help build the infrastructure, skills and sovereign capabilities needed for India’s AI-first future”.

Amazon followed suit, saying it would invest more than $35 billion in the country by 2030, with an unspecified portion of that investment going toward improving AI capabilities.

The announcements come at a particularly interesting time.

As fears of an AI bubble gripped global markets and valuations of tech stocks soared, several leading brokerages took a contrarian view of India’s AI landscape.

Jefferies’ Christopher Wood said the country’s stocks were a “reverse AI trade.” This basically means that India should outperform other markets in…