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Union IT and electronics minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Saturday that with India and the US finalising a framework for an interim trade agreement, India’s access to advanced graphics processing units and data centre equipment will accelerate and large opportunities open up for domestic startups, service providers and the broader artificial intelligence (AI) ecosystem.
India and the US will significantly increase trade in technology products, including GPUs and other goods used in data centres, and expand joint technology cooperation, said the India-US joint statement on framework for an interim agreement regarding reciprocal and mutually beneficial trade.
Responding to questions on the India-US joint statement, Vaishnaw said data centres will be a major growth driver in the coming years, with committed investments of about $90 billion so far, a figure he expects to cross $200 billion in the near future. “This will create new opportunities across the AI stack and enable startups to build and scale solutions from India for the world,” he said.
India currently has about 38,000 GPUs under its common compute infrastructure and will soon add 20,000 GPUs, with further expansion planned under the AI Mission, according to the minister. The next phase, he said, would be shaped after consultations at the upcoming AI Summit, where more than 100 global AI leaders are expected to participate.
The proposed interim trade agreement promises to be a potential watershed moment for India’s AI and data centre ecosystem, with GPUs and data centre equipment explicitly mentioned for the first time in a bilateral trade framework between the two countries. According to the joint statement, India and the US will also deepen joint technology cooperation.
Industry leaders said this could address long-standing challenges around high import duties, export restrictions and regulatory uncertainty that have constrained India’s competitiveness in the global AI infrastructure race.
Piyush Somani, founder, chairman and managing director of ESDS Software Solution, described the trade framework as a turning point for India’s AI infrastructure landscape. “For the first time, GPUs and data centre goods have been explicitly named in a bilateral trade framework between the world’s largest and fifth-largest economies. That alone signals the strategic importance both nations attach to AI infrastructure,” he said.
Currently, enterprise GPU servers attract import duties of 20-28% in India, significantly inflating costs. Somani said that an NVIDIA H100 server priced at about $250,000 in the US can cost nearly $325,000 after duties in India, making GPU-as-a-service offerings about 40% more expensive than in competing hubs such as Singapore or the UAE. “This single barrier has been bleeding India’s competitiveness. The agreement signals the beginning of the end of that cost disadvantage,” he said.
Somani said that if duties on enterprise GPU servers move towards zero, the cost of setting up a 10 MW GPU-ready data centre could fall about 14%, to Rs 2,518 crore from Rs 2,926 crore, unlocking tens of thousands of crores in additional AI infrastructure capacity at a national level.
Vaishnaw was speaking at a press conference on semiconductor firm Qualcomm's campus in Bengaluru, where he also highlighted India’s rapid progress in semiconductor design, announcing that Qualcomm had unveiled a two-nanometre chip designed in India.
“AMD has done it, Qualcomm has done it. Companies are now designing complete products in India. Each die has 20 to 30 billion transistors, and this level of complexity being handled here is a major milestone for our country,” Vaishnaw said.
On intellectual property, the minister clarified that intellectual property (IP) ownership will depend on individual company policies, but reiterated India’s commitment to co-development, co-creation and respecting global IP norms.
India and the US will significantly increase trade in technology products, including GPUs and other goods used in data centres, and expand joint technology cooperation, said the India-US joint statement on framework for an interim agreement regarding reciprocal and mutually beneficial trade.
Responding to questions on the India-US joint statement, Vaishnaw said data centres will be a major growth driver in the coming years, with committed investments of about $90 billion so far, a figure he expects to cross $200 billion in the near future. “This will create new opportunities across the AI stack and enable startups to build and scale solutions from India for the world,” he said.
India currently has about 38,000 GPUs under its common compute infrastructure and will soon add 20,000 GPUs, with further expansion planned under the AI Mission, according to the minister. The next phase, he said, would be shaped after consultations at the upcoming AI Summit, where more than 100 global AI leaders are expected to participate.
The proposed interim trade agreement promises to be a potential watershed moment for India’s AI and data centre ecosystem, with GPUs and data centre equipment explicitly mentioned for the first time in a bilateral trade framework between the two countries. According to the joint statement, India and the US will also deepen joint technology cooperation.
Industry leaders said this could address long-standing challenges around high import duties, export restrictions and regulatory uncertainty that have constrained India’s competitiveness in the global AI infrastructure race.
Piyush Somani, founder, chairman and managing director of ESDS Software Solution, described the trade framework as a turning point for India’s AI infrastructure landscape. “For the first time, GPUs and data centre goods have been explicitly named in a bilateral trade framework between the world’s largest and fifth-largest economies. That alone signals the strategic importance both nations attach to AI infrastructure,” he said.
Currently, enterprise GPU servers attract import duties of 20-28% in India, significantly inflating costs. Somani said that an NVIDIA H100 server priced at about $250,000 in the US can cost nearly $325,000 after duties in India, making GPU-as-a-service offerings about 40% more expensive than in competing hubs such as Singapore or the UAE. “This single barrier has been bleeding India’s competitiveness. The agreement signals the beginning of the end of that cost disadvantage,” he said.
Somani said that if duties on enterprise GPU servers move towards zero, the cost of setting up a 10 MW GPU-ready data centre could fall about 14%, to Rs 2,518 crore from Rs 2,926 crore, unlocking tens of thousands of crores in additional AI infrastructure capacity at a national level.
Vaishnaw was speaking at a press conference on semiconductor firm Qualcomm's campus in Bengaluru, where he also highlighted India’s rapid progress in semiconductor design, announcing that Qualcomm had unveiled a two-nanometre chip designed in India.
“AMD has done it, Qualcomm has done it. Companies are now designing complete products in India. Each die has 20 to 30 billion transistors, and this level of complexity being handled here is a major milestone for our country,” Vaishnaw said.
On intellectual property, the minister clarified that intellectual property (IP) ownership will depend on individual company policies, but reiterated India’s commitment to co-development, co-creation and respecting global IP norms.
