Nvidia, the AI chipmaking giant from the United States (US), is expanding its footprint in India by partnering with the country's best venture capitalists. The aim is to scout and fund the next generation of AI startups. This is seen as Nvidia's increasing belief in India's budding AI ecosystem that has been receiving large investments from global tech companies.
In a statement on Wednesday, Nvidia said it is working with venture capital firms, including Peak XV Partners, Elevation Capital, Nexus Venture Partners, Z47 and Accel to identify and fund promising AI-focused startups, reported CNBC. Venture investors have been showing rising interest in India's technology sector, supported by a strong pipeline of public listings that have delivered notable returns in recent years.
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AI Summit momentum and startup scale
India is currently hosting a large-scale AI summit that has drawn participation from global technology leaders and heads of state. Nvidia's chief executive Jensen Huang was expected to attend but withdrew due to "unforeseen circumstances", stated CNBC in its report. Despite this, the company's engagement with Indian startups continues to grow. More than 4,000 AI startups from India have already joined Nvidia's global startup programme, which assists young technology firms in building products, scaling operations and entering markets.
Nvidia is working with government agencies and research organisations as it continues its efforts in developing its domestic data centre infrastructure. The initiative aligns with New Delhi's 'IndiaAI' initiative, which aims to enhance India's AI capabilities and create opportunities for new funding for local startups. The overall policy environment is conducive to the government's ambitions of making India a leader in the technology space and significant approvals have already been made in semiconductor and digital infrastructure projects.
As of September last year, New Delhi had approved $18 billion worth of semiconductor projects as it looks to build a domestic supply chain, reported CNBC.
Data centres, cloud alliances and sovereign AI
Besides the investments, the company has also partnered with other cloud and infrastructure players such as Larsen & Toubro, Yotta and E2E Networks to deploy AI chip clusters and develop data centre infrastructure. The investments, pegged at more than 50 billion dollars, from Amazon, Microsoft and Google are some of the large-scale investments into the country.
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Beyond venture funding, Nvidia has partnered with Indian cloud and infrastructure providers such as Larsen & Toubro, Yotta and E2E Networks to deploy AI chip clusters and build data-centre capacity. Major investment announcements from companies including Amazon, Microsoft and Google further highlight the scale of infrastructure commitments flowing into the country.
Nvidia is also backing Indian firms through its "NVIDIA Nemotron models", enabling organisations to develop chatbots, AI agents and speech systems trained on India-specific data and languages. These efforts support the broader concept of sovereign AI, the ability of a nation to build and operate artificial intelligence systems using its own infrastructure, datasets and industrial ecosystem rather than relying heavily on foreign providers.
