Foundations For The Next Decade

Policy clarity, capital mobilisation, autonomous Al systems and the rise of Al-first infrastructure are converging to create the backbone of a sovereign Al economy

- By A S RAJGOPAL

As India accelerates toward a digital-first economy, 2025 has emerged as a defining year for artificial intelligence (AI) and data-centre infrastructure.

What once began as a cloud and colocation growth story is now evolving into a far deeper strategic shift centred on AI model training, sovereign compute, geopolitics, and national digital destiny.

The policy moves, capital flows, and architectural resets of this year will decisively shape India's global position from 2026 onward.

Self-Improving Systems

The coming year will witness the rise of autonomous, self-improving AI systems that can learn, adapt and optimise without constant human intervention. Research frameworks such as MIT's SEAL, which allows large language models to generate their own synthetic training data and fine-tuning strategies, represent early steps toward recursive self-improvement, a keystone on the path to Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).

Simultaneously, global platforms are pushing AI reasoning deeper into real-world problem-solving. OpenAI's Deep Research Agent demonstrates how AI can now conduct multi-step online research and generate structured intelligence, while Google's Gemini 3 has significantly advanced visual reasoning and multi-modal understanding. These developments are not incremental; they signal a transition toward AI systems that operate with increasing autonomy, reasoning depth and real-world agency.

Global corporate investment into AI has already crossed $1.6 trillion. Beyond the US, countries such as Saudi Arabia, France and China are committing hundreds of billions of dollars to national AI infrastructure. Against this, India has attracted a cumulative Al investment of about $20 billion, driven largely by private sector players and select government initiatives.