‘As vital as energy and defence’: Countries rushing to build AI infrastructure, says Michael Dell

“Every country is figuring that its AI infrastructure is just as important as its energy, communications, semiconductors, and defence…any strategic capability that a sovereign nation has,” he added.

Michael Dell’s comments come at a time when New Delhi is increasingly looking to build its own domestic AI industry. Large global tech companies, including Dell, Nvidia and Google, are taking note of the country’s AI potential and rushing to build the key AI infrastructure needed to support the growing demand for AI services in the world’s most populous country.

India hosted one of the world’s biggest AI events earlier this year, drawing top tech companies and their CEOs, including Alphabet Inc’s Sundar Pichai, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei. They spoke about the advantages India offers, from a vast talent pool and a large consumer market to a booming startup and enterprise ecosystem.

Although power in the global AI economy is not evenly distributed, India wants to be seen as a serious player in artificial intelligence, as it is aware that whichever country builds the largest AI ecosystem will set global AI standards and reap broad economic and military benefits.

Dell Technologies is positioning itself as a key supplier of AI servers and infrastructure powered by Nvidia chips. (Image: The Indian Express/ Anuj Bhatia)

But India needs help to rapidly develop its AI infrastructure, including expanding AI data centres, servers, and potentially advanced semiconductor-related manufacturing. It may be lacking in three key areas: dominant cloud platforms; frontier model labs such as OpenAI and Anthropic; and deep integration with semiconductor design firms such as Nvidia and AMD. While the US holds a lead in these areas, India is pitching itself as the fastest-growing digital market, seeking to leverage its experience in building large-scale digital public infrastructure and position itself as a cost-effective hub for AI innovation.

For the past two years or so, the world’s top tech companies, including Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Meta, have spent billions of dollars on artificial intelligence. The main portion of this spending is directed toward building AI infrastructure, particularly high-performance chips supplied by companies like Nvidia and manufacturing partners such as TSMC. Companies are ramping up infrastructure investments to keep pace with surging global demand for AI services, which are becoming increasingly popular, especially in the business sector.

Players like Dell are benefiting from the AI boom, as the company slowly transitions from being just a PC maker to becoming a key AI server supplier powered by Nvidia’s Blackwell Ultra chips. At the Dell Technologies World conference in Las Vegas this week, the company announced that it has over 5,000 clients for its AI Factory line of servers, which power artificial intelligence workloads using Nvidia chips, software, and services, up from 4,000 when the company reported quarterly earnings in February.

Customers, including Eli Lilly and Company, Honeywell International, and Samsung Electronics, are using Dell products for applications such as drug discovery and building AI-optimised semiconductor factories.