India Joins US-Led Pax Silica, Aims to Be Global AI Use Case Capital

He said that IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw is in Washington to attend a meeting on critical minerals, asserting that India's involvement in such issues is at the high table.

"My minister is in Washington attending a meeting on critical minerals. So I think from a strategic point of view, it's important that India is at the high table as far as all of these important issues are concerned," Krishnan said.

"Fundamentally, it's about addressing the supply chain of critical minerals and it's important for a country like India to be part of that, and I think it's a recognition of the trust," he added.

US Ambassador to India Sergio Gor on Monday announced that New Delhi would be invited next month to join Pax Silica, a US-led strategic initiative aimed at securing critical supply chains spanning silicon, advanced manufacturing, and AI.

Speaking at an event organised by industry body Nasscom, the Secretary said that India should aspire to become the global use case capital for artificial intelligence, with the government pursuing a balanced approach of maintaining openness to international players while building sovereign AI capabilities.

Krishnan outlined India's comprehensive AI strategy ahead of the IndiaAI Impact Summit, a multilateral gathering of world leaders scheduled for next month in the national capital to discuss global AI policy-making.

Addressing concerns about the concentration of AI infrastructure in the hands of a few companies, particularly in chip manufacturing, Krishnan emphasised India's technology-agnostic procurement strategy.

"We are not going to necessarily say that we will buy only NVIDIA GPUs. Our approach is whoever produces the chips," he said, explaining how the government is avoiding vendor lock-in.

He noted that recent developments like DeepSeek have demonstrated that AI development need not be as expensive as previously thought. "DeepSeek was a moment where something broke through, and suddenly you realize that it need not cost as much as they say it would cost. There's a way in which you can do it cheaper," he said.

The Prime Minister recently met with 12 startups and institutions selected under the India AI Mission to prepare India's first foundation models, signaling the government's commitment to developing indigenous AI capabilities.

Krishnan stressed that India's differentiation from other countries lies in its continued commitment to being an open system. "What is available, and I think it's important in the technology world to be an open system, because people in India must have the access to whatever is the latest in terms of technology," he said.

"Some of it we will develop ourselves. Some of it, in due course, we will develop, but why should you restrict access to technology, saying it's not Indian and therefore I will not use it?" he added, noting this approach has enabled the IT sector's growth.

The Secretary said India's development of sovereign capabilities in AI and becoming strategically autonomous is in the larger global interest.

"You are assuring the world that there is one more production line, one more option available for many countries in the world to use," he said.

Krishnan emphasised that the democratisation of AI extends beyond models and computing power to real-world applications, where revenue will be generated. He compared the opportunity to the India IT industry's pivotal moment of transformation.

"It is legitimate for India to aspire towards becoming the use case capital for AI in the world. If the active startups are able to do it, that will make a difference. That will make AI available to a wide range of users," he said.

The secretary noted that this aligns with the Prime Minister's message that AI must be made available for use, similar to what India achieved with Digital Public Infrastructure.

Responding to comparisons with the USD 500 billion AI investment announced in the US, Krishnan clarified that such investments are primarily driven by the private sector and are not limited to any single geography. He pointed to recent announcements by Google, Microsoft, and AWS in India totalling around USD 70 billion over the past few months.

"If that investment is there, that compute is there, that is something which you can then ride on the back of and build further, then that really makes the impact," he said.

The government is also working on sovereign cloud capacity for AI intended for government use and certain restricted categories of users, with several companies already making such offerings.

Highlighting India's semiconductor progress, Krishnan noted that 20 per cent of the global design workforce in semiconductors belongs to India. "Many of them are in global capability centers establishing here. Eventually this should convert into Indian intellectual property, designing chips, and those in turn becoming products that India can produce," he said.

He revealed that fabs and advanced packaging facilities under the India Semiconductor Mission are receiving orders and some are planning to export their entire production. "The best test of industrial policy is whether you're competitive and whether you can export," he said, noting this validates that the policy was fundamentally sound.

The Prime Minister had mentioned in September that there will be an ISM 2.0, which is currently in its final stages of development.

- ANI