Overview
- The four-year investment runs from 2026 to 2029 and builds on a $3 billion pledge made earlier in 2025.
- A new India South Central cloud region in Hyderabad is slated to go live in mid-2026 as Microsoft’s largest hyperscale presence in the country with three availability zones.
- Operational regions in Chennai and Pune will be expanded alongside sovereign public and private cloud offerings tailored to India’s data-governance requirements.
- Microsoft doubled its training goal to equip 20 million Indians with AI skills by 2030, and Azure capabilities will be integrated into e-Shram and the National Career Service to serve more than 310 million informal workers.
- The announcement followed Satya Nadella’s meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who welcomed the move, while Microsoft also detailed about $5.4 billion in planned cloud spending in Canada.