Amazon Raises Investment in India to $26 Billion by 2030

FILE PHOTO: A man walks past a logo of Amazon Prime Video during a launch event in Mumbai, India, April 28, 2022. REUTERS/Francis Mascarenhas/File PhotoREUTERS
FILE PHOTO: A man walks past a logo of Amazon Prime Video during a launch event in Mumbai, India, April 28, 2022. REUTERS/Francis Mascarenhas/File PhotoREUTERS
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Amazon Raises Investment in India to $26 Billion by 2030

FILE PHOTO: A man walks past a logo of Amazon Prime Video during a launch event in Mumbai, India, April 28, 2022. REUTERS/Francis Mascarenhas/File PhotoREUTERS
FILE PHOTO: A man walks past a logo of Amazon Prime Video during a launch event in Mumbai, India, April 28, 2022. REUTERS/Francis Mascarenhas/File PhotoREUTERS

Amazon.com Inc said on Friday it will take its investments in India to $26 billion by 2030, adding $6.5 billion in new planned investments in an announcement made after CEO Andy Jassy met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the United States.

Though Jassy gave no breakdown, the announcement follows Amazon's cloud computing unit Amazon Web Services (AWS) saying last month it will invest 1.06 trillion rupees ($12.9 billion) in the country by the end of 2030.

Earlier, Amazon had announced a $6.5 billion investment plan, largely to boost its e-commerce business where it competes with Walmart's Flipkart and billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Retail.

The new investment amount committed now comes to around an additional $6.5 billion, Reuters reported.

The e-commerce giant's announced investment during Modi's trip adds to other companies, including US semiconductor toolmaker Applied Materials and memory chip firm Micron Technology, which have made commitments during the Indian prime minister's state visit.

Modi and Jassy spoke about supporting Indian startups, creating jobs, enabling exports, digitisation, and empowering individuals and small businesses to compete globally, an Amazon blog post said.

Separately, Google will open a global fintech operation center in GIFT City in India's western state of Gujarat, with teams working on operations supporting its payment service GPay, and other product operations at Google, the company said in a statement to Reuters.

"We shared Google is investing $10 billion in the India digitisation fund, and we are continuing to invest through that," CEO Sundar Pichai told reporters in a video shared on Twitter by Reuters partner ANI company.

On the final day of his Washington trip, Modi met with US and Indian technology executives, including Apple's Tim Cook, Google's Pichai and Microsoft's Satya Nadella and appealed to global companies to "Make in India".



Google, Volkswagen Partner on Smartphone AI Assistant

People walk next to a Google logo during a trade fair in Hannover Messe, in Hanover, Germany, April 22, 2024. (Reuters)
People walk next to a Google logo during a trade fair in Hannover Messe, in Hanover, Germany, April 22, 2024. (Reuters)
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Google, Volkswagen Partner on Smartphone AI Assistant

People walk next to a Google logo during a trade fair in Hannover Messe, in Hanover, Germany, April 22, 2024. (Reuters)
People walk next to a Google logo during a trade fair in Hannover Messe, in Hanover, Germany, April 22, 2024. (Reuters)

Alphabet’s Google is providing key capabilities for an artificial intelligence assistant for Volkswagen drivers in a smartphone app, part of Google's strategy to win business by offering tools to build enterprise AI applications.

Consumers can ask Volkswagen's in-app assistant questions like "How do I change a flat tire?" or point their phone cameras at vehicle dashboards to receive relevant information.

The AI assistant draws on Google's Gemini large language models, programs that can understand and generate predictive responses to human language, and cloud computing capacity. The VW tool was designed by adding data such as Volkswagen owner’s manuals and YouTube videos on vehicle maintenance to Gemini.

Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian told Reuters that the product required overcoming technical hurdles to multimodality, the ability to process different data types such as text, images and videos.

"The problem looks superficially simple, but it’s technically very complex," Kurian said. "Most people think what we built is a speech-to-text translation system that then looks up a manual. Absolutely not."

The AI assistant is free and available to about 120,000 owners of Volkswagen’s Atlas and Atlas Cross Sport models. It will roll out by early next year to other cars from model year 2020 and later.

Corporate adoption of generative AI could alter the lucrative cloud computing market, where Google places third in terms of market share behind Amazon and Microsoft . Most companies are still searching for applications that users will find practical.

Cloud computing is a growing business segment for Google, accounting for $33 billion of the firm's $307 billion in overall revenue in 2023.

AI solutions have driven billions in revenue this year, the company has said, though it declined to disclose more precise figures.

Volkswagen declined to give details about usage for its AI assistant so far.