Tech: India’s DeepSeek Moment: A Policy Blueprint for AI Sovereignty

India’s DeepSeek Moment: How Google’s $15B AI Bet Could Reshape Global AI Power

Curated by: Elester Johnson | Date: October 21, 2025

🔥 The Headline That Sparked It All

“Google to invest $15 billion in AI hub in India, Sundar Pichai briefs PM Modi”

This landmark announcement marks Google’s largest AI investment outside the U.S., with a gigawatt-scale compute facility planned in Visakhapatnam. It’s more than a tech story — it’s a geopolitical and economic inflection point.

Demand for AI tools and solutions is surging among businesses and individuals in India, which is projected to have more than 900 million internet users by year's end.

Google plans for the centre to scale to multiple gigawatts, he added, comparing the project to "a digital backbone connecting different parts of India together".

Globally, data centres are an area of phenomenal growth, fuelled by the need to store massive amounts of digital data, and to train and run energy-intensive AI tools.

Google chief Sundar Pichai said on X that he had spoken to Prime Minister Narendra Modi about the "landmark development".

"This hub combines gigawatt-scale compute capacity, a new international subsea gateway, and large-scale energy infrastructure," he wrote.

"Through it we will bring our industry-leading technology to enterprises and users in India, accelerating AI innovation and driving growth across the country."

🧠 DeepSeek vs. Google: A Tale of Two AI Models

India’s challenge: merge DeepSeek’s frugal innovation with Google’s infrastructure to build sovereign AI capabilities.

 With India playing a key role in Global AI landscape, recently a top American AI firms looking to court users in the world's fifth-largest economy have made a flurry of announcements about expanding into the country.

This month US startup Anthropic said it plans to open an office in India next year, with its chief executive, Dario Amodei, meeting Prime Minister Modi.

 Following this, others like OpenAI and Perplexity also followed suite.

OpenAI has said it will open an India office later this year, with its chief Sam Altman noting that ChatGPT usage in the country had grown fourfold over the past year.

AI firm Perplexity also announced a major partnership in July with Indian telecom giant Airtel, offering the company's 360 million customers a free one-year Perplexity Pro subscription

🛠 India’s Strategic Playbook: Building an AI Export Economy

1. Incubate Startups with Google’s Infrastructure

• Offer subsidized compute access to Indian AI startups.
• Focus on sectors like agriculture, healthcare, and education.

2. Create AI Export Zones

• Modeled after IT SEZs.
• Target emerging markets with scalable, affordable AI tools.

3. Upskill the Workforce

• Train 1 million AI engineers by 2030.
• Position India as the global hub for AI services and consulting.

🌍 India’s Role in Global AI Standards

1. Champion Ethical AI

• Advocate for fairness, bias mitigation, and data sovereignty.
• Lead forums like G20 and GPAI.
• While China leads the world with 230 AI clusters, the United States leads with 50% of global compute power for AI, according to a new report on global AI superpowers by TRG Datacenters. In second and third place for AI compute, perhaps less obvious candidates: the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Traditional industrial powerhouse Germany ranks only 10th for AI compute capacity.

2. Develop India-Centric Benchmarks

• Build datasets for Indian languages and cultural contexts.
• Influence global evaluation standards.
• “The U.S. keeps the title of the most AI-dominant country in 2025, outperforming every other nation with the AI compute power and the highest total power capacity at 19.8K megawatts,” 
•  “When it comes to AI chips, France takes second place with over 989K, getting ahead of China, India, and South Korea.” India can now move up the ranking with this new focus on AI and take a leaf out of China to start building its own AI clusters, and Modi will surely be looking at this aspect of leadership to not rely solely on service based industry alone as in the past.

3. Forge South-South AI Alliances

• Collaborate with Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America.
• Offer India as a trusted AI partner for the Global South.
• The top 10 AI nations on the planet have a collective 496 AI clusters with a combined compute capacity equivalent to about 79 million NVIDIA H100 chips, according to the report, which is based on the Epoch AI dataset, one of the most detailed sources on global AI infrastructure

🧭 Geopolitical Context: AI Diplomacy Amid Trade Tensions

Despite tariff-driven friction between the U.S. and India, Google’s investment is a strategic exception:

• India’s Reaction: Strong government support, local partnerships, and alignment with the $1.2B IndiaAI Mission.
• U.S. Strategy: Maintain influence in India’s tech sector amid rising Chinese competition.
• Global Signal: AI infrastructure is too critical to be derailed by politics.

🔌 Correlation with Google’s $25B U.S. Investment

Google is building a global AI compute mesh — and India is now a critical node.

🚀 Final Thought: India’s DeepSeek Moment

This is more than hosting foreign infrastructure. It’s a chance for India to:

• Build its own DeepSeek-style model.
• Lead in ethical, multilingual, inclusive AI and most importantly, INDIA-focussed
• Export scalable solutions to the world and within
• Most of all, India will need to re-think its IT focus to the world and move from a Service delivery based industry taking a leaf out of the China story in building its own DeepSeek-ish capability.
• Its no longer an option to rely solely as a services industry, and "tariffs" will hopefully be a good teacher to think otherwise

“AI for Bharat, AI for the World” isn’t just a slogan — it’s a roadmap.