US-India Partnership Can Rev up Pace of AI Adoption

May 7, 2026

India has the potential to give the
US a further edge in the race for
AI adoption, with American tech
giants such as Google, Microsoft
and Amazon already committing
billions of dollars in investments to
build AI hubs across India.
These investments are aimed to
ensure that US-designed technology
forms the backbone of the Global
South’s largest economy. If the
future of the digital world is built on
US-Indian infrastructure, the world
will remain open and secure. But
if it is built on China’s proprietary
technology stack, the global order
will fracture.
Although the US maintains a
decisive edge in frontier models and
high-end compute, China has proven
that its capacity for innovation is a
force to be reckoned with. To counter
this, the US needs the talent and
dataset scaling that only India can
provide.
India offers more than just
a massive market. It provides
population-scale datasets drawn
from almost 1.5 billion people, making
it a vital theater for testing AI in realworld environments — from rural
agriculture to urban healthcare.
Moreover, with an AI talent pool
projected to exceed 1.25 million by
2027, India provides the intellectual
heft and human capital required to
sustain a high-tempo innovation cycle.
Potential, however, is not the
same as proficiency. While India’s
talent pool is vast, much more must
be done to match skills to specific AI
tasks. Bridging this gap should be
seen as a US imperative. Integrating
Indian talent into US-led ecosystems
is the only way for American firms
to maintain their edge against a
competitor that views technology as
a tool of state control, rather than a
means of individual empowerment.
It presents a four-point plan to
turn the current US-India momentum
in AI into a permanent strategic
advantage. It suggests that linking
India’s burgeoning startup ecosystem
with the technological tools and
capital available in the US can create
common solutions for an array of
global challenges.
Second, the two countries can
cooperate in constructing resilient
infrastructure and supply chains.
Their efforts should encompass
not only critical minerals and
semiconductors, but also undersea
cables, open telecommunications
networks and data centers.