India now world's third-most competitive nation in AI, behind just US and China

However, the gap in the points underscored that India still has a long way to go before it can compete with US and China

India is now the third most competitive country in the world in artificial intelligence, a report by Stanford University said. The ranking emphasises India’s rapid growth in the global AI landscape.

According to the University’s Global AI Vibrancy Tool’s Visual Capitalist chart, India came in at the third position with a score of 21.59, behind top two AI nations US (78.6) and China (36.95).

The gap in the points underscored that India still has a long way to go before it can compete with US and China. However, the New Delhi’s score was well above that of several major nations, including South Korea, Japan, Singapore, United Kingdom, Germany and others.

The tool that measures the competitiveness considers several factors such as talent availability, research and development, investment, public policy and perception, infrastructure and economic impact.

The report noted the country’s rapid progress in the sector with backing from strong tech ecosystem, investments and growing pool of talent.

The development comes a few days after top global companies announced their plans to invest multi-billion dollars in the country’s AI infrastructure in the next few years.

Amazon announced an investment commitment of $35 billion by 2030 in key AI, logistics and cloud computing infrastructure. Microsoft has pledged an investment of $17.5 billion, its biggest investment in Asia for cloud and AI expansion.

Earlier, Intel, Cognizant, OpenAI had also announced investment and other collaboration plans, underscoring world's confidence in India's growth as a major AI destination besides the US and China.