Microsoft Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Satya Nadella, on Wednesday announced cloud and AI led strategic partnerships with the government and industry leaders from across key sectors of the Indian economy.

The company is also partnering with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) under the IndiaAI Mission that aims to position India as a global leader in artificial intelligence (AI).

The collaboration with MeitY seeks to accelerate AI development and adoption in India, while fostering an inclusive, innovative, and ethical AI ecosystem, Nadella said here on his second day of AI tour.

Microsoft on Wednesday had announced $3 billion investment over two years in Indian cloud and AI infrastructure to accelerate adoption of AI, skilling and innovation.

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“India is rapidly becoming a leader in AI innovation, unlocking new opportunity across the country. The investments in infrastructure and skilling we are announcing today reaffirm our commitment to making India AI-first, and will help ensure people and organisations across the country benefit broadly,” he said.

Microsoft will also contribute to the IndiaAI Mission Datasets platform by supporting data collection and synthetic data generation, as well as by engaging partners like AI4Bharat.

Additionally, the company will invest in skilling around five-lakh students and teachers on AI by 2026, including through partnerships with educational institutes and government bodies, Nadella said.

It will establish an AI Center of Excellence, ‘AI Catalysts’, to promote rural AI innovation and support one-lakh AI innovators and developers through hackathons, community-building solutions, and an AI marketplace.

Microsoft will also set up ‘AI Productivity Labs’ in 20 National Skill Training Institutes (NSTIs)/NIELIT centres in 10 States to impart foundational courses for 20,000 educators.

“The collaboration will also focus on developing AI-enabled solutions for citizen-scale domains such as healthcare, education, accessibility, and agriculture by working with start-ups and social enterprises, advancing foundational models with Indic language support for India’s unique requirements, providing research collaboration opportunities through Microsoft Research (MSR) India,” Nadella added.

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Furthermore, Microsoft also announced wide-ranging partnerships spanning diverse industries including financial services, healthcare, edtech, automative and public sector as decision makers acknowledge the transformative potential of Copilot and other gen AI tools, seeking to integrate them more extensively within their organisations.

The company has partnerships with the Mahindra group, Apollo Hospitals, RailTel, Bajaj Finserv and UpGrad and will deliver significant impact in terms of new revenue streams, creation of intellectual property and advance research.