US President Joe Biden looks on as India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi speaks during a gathering with senior officials and CEOs of American and Indian corporations, within the East Room the White House in Washington, DC, on June 23, 2023.
Brendan Smialowski | AFP | Getty Images
The CEOs of Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft got a healthy dose of facetime with the leader of India this week, who was within the U.S. to satisfy with President Biden in addition to other political and business leaders.
The tech company execs spent over an hour with Prime Minister Narendra Modi contained in the White House on Friday, discussing opportunities and challenges in investing in India. Earlier within the week, Modi met with Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
After the meeting concluded on the White House, Apple CEO Tim Cook told CNBC that India represents a “huge opportunity.” When asked if Apple would proceed expanding there, he pointed to the 2 retail stores the corporate opened in India earlier this 12 months.
It was the primary state visit to the U.S. for Modi, who became prime minister in 2014. Following Friday’s meeting, the White House said Google will likely be working with the Indian Institute of Science on open sourcing of speech data for artificial intelligence models.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was also in Washington for the event. Two individuals with knowledge of the matter said Altman and Modi discussed opportunities to collaborate on AI.
Hemant Taneja, CEO of enterprise capital firm General Catalyst, attended the roundtable. Ahead of the meeting, he shared with CNBC his intentions to seek out alignment on efforts to streamline technology transfer rules between the U.S. and India, which has overtaken China because the world’s most-populous country. U.S. relations with China have grow to be increasingly strained up to now few years.
“We’re in a digital cold war with China, and this approach will ultimately foster an environment of increased cooperation,” Taneja said.
Large semiconductor corporations like Micron and Applied Materials used Modi’s visit as a chance to announce plans to make significant investments India. Micron is aiming to open a facility in Modi’s home state of Gujarat because the broader chip industry looks for tactics to diversify its supply chain. Lam Research revealed plans to coach 60,000 Indian engineers.
Access to highly expert labor and outdated labor laws are challenges for American businesses in terms of staffing up in India.
“U.S. corporations in India have had difficulties over time with regulatory uncertainty in addition to challenges in relocating or terminating employees,” said Kenneth Juster, former U.S. Ambassador to India. Juster, who’s now a distinguished fellow on the Council on Foreign Relations, said he stays optimistic, adding that India has pledged to ease the method for foreign corporations to do business there.
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