AI won’t take away jobs, will create many more, says MeitY Secretary at India AI Summit

MeitY Secretary S. Krishnan

• AI expected to create more jobs, not reduce employment in India
• India's first commercial semiconductor production to start soon
• AI Expo 2026 to showcase global tech, startups, and research

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Artificial Intelligence is unlikely to have a major negative impact on employment, and is instead expected to generate new opportunities, Secretary of the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) S Krishnan said on Monday.

In an interaction with Moneycontrol, Krishnan said, “Do not expect that much impact of AI on jobs, many more other jobs will be created because of AI.”

Meanwhile, addressing the India AI Impact Summit, Krishnan noted that the response to the event had exceeded expectations, reflecting strong global interest in India’s rapidly expanding AI and semiconductor ecosystem.

He traced the roots of India’s electronics push to the National Policy on Electronics introduced in 2012, adding that momentum picked up significantly after 2014 with a sustained focus on strengthening hardware capabilities. Over the past decade, India has broadened its efforts across electronics manufacturing and semiconductor development.

Under the India Semiconductor Mission, launched in 2022, ten projects have been approved so far. Krishnan said the country’s first commercial-scale semiconductor production is expected to begin shortly, with Micron set to start operations at its India facility later this month.

He added that Micron is eventually expected to work on High Bandwidth Memory (HBM), a key component for AI applications that currently faces global supply constraints.

While India has traditionally been a global hub for chip design, Krishnan said the focus is now shifting towards semiconductor manufacturing as well. The recently announced Semiconductor Mission 2.0 in the Union Budget signals expanded government support, with a key objective being the design of AI-based chips within India.

On AI infrastructure, Krishnan outlined a policy framework that underwrites access to computing power rather than directly subsidising data centres. Researchers, startups, MSMEs and students can access AI compute at around Rs 65 per GPU hour, significantly lower than global rates of two to three dollars per GPU hour.

He said India is also encouraging private investment in AI-driven data centres, leveraging abundant renewable energy resources and one of the world’s largest power grids to build green data centre capacity at scale.

Krishnan emphasised that these investments are aimed at building long-term hardware capability and ensuring a sovereign AI ecosystem.

The Expo, being held from February 16 to 20 at Bharat Mandapam, will showcase practical AI applications and feature participation from global tech firms, startups, academia, research institutions and international partners across 13 country pavilions.