India’s tech industry is being less than bold in embracing artificial intelligence. It’s hoping to create solutions for corporate clients by building on top of somebody else’s investment in foundational technologies, hardly a strategy for pathbreaking success.
ChatGPT’s high-voltage debut last year has galvanized China. Baidu’s Ernie, which claims to have outperformed Microsoft-backed OpenAI’s model on some measures, has pulled Ant Group and JD.com into the bot-building race. Tech czars like Wang Xiaochuan, the founder of the search engine Sogou, have also joined the quest, drawing talent to the industry. On money flow, the US is still beating China six to one, but the number of venture deals in the Asian country’s AI industry is already outpacing consumer tech, according to Preqin data.
India’s startup landscape, meanwhile, is caught in a time warp, with embarrassed investors marking down their stakes in Byju’s, an online education company collapsing under the weight of its own reckless growth. The easy funding from the pandemic era has dried up. As financiers push founders for profitability, they’re discovering that in many cases even the revenue is fake.
Inflection AI Raises $1.3 Billion Investment From Microsoft and Nvidia