I recently asked NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang a question in Houston, in the US, while engaging with the global powerhouses of AI, Systèmes and SOLIDWORKS ecosystem, about AI, chips, and geopolitics. The response was unequivocal: chip leadership and artificial intelligence together will define the new world—its products, processes, and people.

That framing matters deeply for India. India is holding an AI summit, perhaps on the greatest scale ever.  Some of the most remarkable deliberations, which will almost redefine tech and economy, but the burning debate that is taking place is actually about what AI can do for India.

As India prepares to host a global AI Summit in February, under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi—who shares a strong personal rapport with Jensen Huang—the conversation around AI must move beyond buzzwords. The real question is not whether India should adopt AI, but how India builds AI as a national infrastructure, at scale, aligned with its culture, economy, and industrial ambition.

AI as the digitisation of intelligence

Artificial intelligence is, at its core, the digitisation of intelligence itself. And intelligence is not optional.

Your language and dialects must capture the values, knowledge, and culture of India, and AI should exactly reflect those values, knowledge and intelligence of the people.

That does not mean AI has to be fundamentally invented in India, but it has to be developed, fine-tuned, and continuously enhanced, Jensen predicts the course of India’s AI push. 

Every society needs it. Every company depends on it. Every government runs on it. In that sense, AI is not merely another technology layer—it is foundational infrastructure, just like water, electricity, roads, or the internet.

No country, no society, and no industry can afford to be left behind.

This is why there is no question of whether India will have AI infrastructure, but how deliberately and inclusively it will be built. India’s Unique AI Imperative is like this.

India is unlike any other nation. With more than 300 dialects, extraordinary cultural diversity, and centuries of embedded knowledge systems, India’s AI cannot be a simple import.

AI systems must reflect Indian values, languages, lived realities, and collective intelligence. That does not necessarily mean AI must be fundamentally invented in India—but it must be developed, fine-tuned, and continuously enhanced in India, by Indians, for Indian and global contexts.

Just as India has built its own digital public goods—Aadhaar, UPI, and India Stack—AI infrastructure must become the next sovereign digital foundation.

Jansen tells me, “There are many AI clouds in India, and I am very proud of working with them. The GSI, the service industry, and the IT service industry, unquestionably, will be reinvented for AI Infrastructure. Instead of developing and maintaining software in the back rooms of the IT department, the IT industry will become a service provider s, and developers of the AI systems.”

From IT services to AI infrastructure providers

India’s industry, especially its globally respected IT and services sector, is on the cusp of reinvention.

The future is not about maintaining software in back rooms of IT departments. The future is about becoming AI infrastructure providers, builders of intelligent systems that automate workflows, accelerate productivity, and unlock new economic value across industries worldwide.

This transformation will demand massive reskilling, but it also opens unprecedented opportunity. India’s service industry, GSI ecosystem, and cloud providers are already positioning themselves to lead in this AI-first world.

At the heart of it all is a simple but powerful idea: AI is infrastructure, not just technology—and entire industries and societies will be built upon it. The word is definitive now, as told by the global chip maker CEO of NVDIA, Jensen. How will it work?

Industrial AI: Build new machines and factories for India

The ultimate question for India is the manufacturing dilemma. And interestingly, the AI actually solves this amid the widely acknowledged fact that India needs to rise to the manufacturing level in the supply chain, and China has done something over the decades. 

That is perhaps the best-kept secret of AI; some call it the “solid works” as put out by a brilliant mind like Manish Kumar of Dassault Systèmes, who literally built the entire architecture of automation for the future factories of today, and of course, inevitably tomorrow.

How will Dassault Systèmes/SolidWorks enable machine-building/ factories of the next generation for Indian companies — sector-wise — large to MSMEs? That is so critical for strengthening the manufacturing base of India

“We are entering an era where artificial intelligence does not just predict or generate, but understands the real world. When AI is grounded in science, physics and validated industrial knowledge, it becomes a force multiplier for human ingenuity,” said Pascal Daloz, CEO of Dassault Systèmes. “Together with NVIDIA, we are building industry World Models that unite Virtual Twins and accelerated computing to help industry design, simulate, and operate complex systems in biology, materials science, engineering and manufacturing with confidence.”

Such breakthroughs and collaboration will establish a new foundation for industrial AI, one that is trustworthy by design and capable of scaling innovation across the generative economy. That is what India needs for its MSMES –to solve their competitiveness and scale not only for the domestic market but for the global supply chain too.

This vision is now becoming tangible by combining science-based Virtual Twin technologies with NVIDIA’s AI infrastructure, open models, and accelerated software libraries. The collaboration is creating industry-grade World Models—AI systems grounded in physics, engineering, biology, and validated industrial knowledge.

How will AI build new factories faster for India?

NVIDIA is adopting Dassault Systèmes model-based systems engineering (MBSE) to design AI factories, starting with the NVIDIA Rubin platform and integrating into the NVIDIA OmniverseTM DSX Blueprint for large-scale AI factory deployment.

As Pascal Daloz, CEO of Dassault Systèmes, notes: “When AI is grounded in science, physics and validated industrial knowledge, it becomes a force multiplier for human ingenuity.”

Jensen Huang calls it Physical AI, the next frontier—AI that understands and operates within the laws of the real world.

Together, these platforms are reshaping biology, materials science, engineering, and manufacturing—moving from prediction and generation to understanding and execution.

AI factories, virtual twins, and sovereignty

For example, Dassault Systèmes, through its OUTSCALE brand, is deploying AI factories across continents using NVIDIA infrastructure—while guaranteeing data privacy, IP protection, and sovereignty.

NVIDIA, in turn, is using Systèmes’ model-based systems engineering to design next-generation AI factories, starting with the Rubin platform, and extending into large-scale Omniverse deployments.

 So, this enables the accelerated discovery of molecules and materials, AI-driven design and physics-based engineering, Autonomous, software-defined factories, and industrial intelligence. 

These are not theoretical promises. Global leaders—from Bel Group and OMRON to Lucid Motors and the National Institute for Aviation Research—are already building the future of industry on this foundation.

India’s defining opportunity

AI will shape the future economy—its structure, productivity, and resilience. It will redefine manufacturing, healthcare, mobility, sustainability, and services. And it will determine whether nations lead or follow in the generative and industrial AI era.

India has the talent, the scale, the democratic digital experience, and now the political intent to build AI as a national infrastructure.

The question is no longer what the future of AI in India? The real question is: how boldly India chooses to build it—for itself and for the world.

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