All the important news from the ongoing India AI Impact Summit

With an eye towards luring more AI investment to the country, India is hosting a four-day AI Impact Summit this week that will be attended by executives from major AI labs and Big Tech, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Nvidia, Microsoft, Google, and Cloudflare, as well as heads of state.

The event, which expects 250,000 visitors, will see Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Reliance Chairman Mukesh Ambani, and Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis in attendance.

India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, is scheduled to deliver a speech with French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday.

Here are all the key updates from the event:

• India earmarks $1.1 billion for its state-backed venture capital fund. The fund will invest in artificial intelligence and advanced manufacturing startups across the country.
• OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said India accounts for more than 100 million weekly active ChatGPT users, second only to the U.S. He also said Indians also account for the most students using ChatGPT.
• Blackstone has picked up a majority stake in Indian AI startup Neysa as part of a $600 million equity fundraise. Teachers’ Venture Growth, TVS Capital, 360 ONE Asset, and Nexus Venture Partners also invested. The company now plans to raise another $600 million in debt, and deploy more than 20,000 GPUs.
• Bengaluru-based C2i, which is building a power solution for data centers, raised $15 million in a Series A round from Peak XV, with participation from Yali Deeptech and TDK Ventures.
• HCL CEO Vineet Nayyar said Indian IT companies will focus on turning profits and not being job creators. These comments come as Indian IT stocks dip as fears of AI disrupting the IT services sector burgeon.
• Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures, said that industries like IT services and BPOs (Business Process Outsourcing) can “almost completely disappear” within five years because of AI. He told Hindustan Times that 250 million young people in India should be selling AI-based products and services to the rest of the world.
• AMD is teaming up with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) to develop rack-scale AI infrastructure based on AMD’s “Helios” platform.
• Anthropic said that it is opening its first office in India in the city of Bengaluru. The company said that the country is the second biggest user of Claude afte the U.S.