Microsoft on Wednesday said it plans to invest $50 billion by the end of the decade to expand access to artificial intelligence (AI) across countries in the Global South, warning that a widening AI divide could deepen economic inequality.
In a blog post, Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith and Chief Responsible AI Officer Natasha Crampton said AI adoption in the Global North is nearly twice that of the Global South. The gap, they noted, risks affecting economic growth and equitable access to opportunities.
Speaking at the India AI Impact Summit, Smith said unequal access to transformative technologies — similar to electricity in the past century — could shape global disparities in the future unless addressed urgently.
The company also announced ‘Elevate for Educators’, a programme aimed at strengthening the capabilities of two million teachers across more than 2 lakh schools, vocational institutes and higher education institutions in India. Microsoft said the initiative is expected to expand AI learning opportunities for around eight million students through partnerships with national education and workforce training authorities.
Microsoft outlined a five-point strategy for AI diffusion: building infrastructure, expanding skills and access through schools and nonprofits, strengthening multilingual AI, supporting local innovation, and improving measurement systems for policymaking.
In the last fiscal year, the company said it invested over $8 billion in data centre infrastructure serving the Global South, including projects in India, Mexico, Africa, South America, Southeast Asia and the Middle East.
The company added it aims to help 20 million people gain AI skills by 2028 globally and has set a target of equipping 20 million people in India with essential AI skills by 2030. It said 5.6 million people in India were trained in 2025.
Microsoft Research is also developing Samiksh, a community-centred AI evaluation framework in collaboration with Indian organisations, designed to incorporate local languages and cultural contexts often missed in English-centric testing.
India currently hosts the world’s second-largest developer community on GitHub, at 24 million users, and is the fastest growing among the top 30 economies, the company said.
-IANS
