Amazon has promised a $13 billion chunk of its mammoth capex plans to build AI and cloud infrastructure in India.

The cloud services and software giant has said it expects $200 billion capex for 2026 as, like other vendors in the market, it struggles to build compute capacity to support the expected explosion in demand for AI services.

Having announced a $35 billion investment in India in 2025, Amazon's commitments in the country between 2010 and 2030 total more than $88 billion, some of which is for new retail fulfillment centers and delivery stations.

The new $13 billion is earmarked for AI and cloud infrastructure, including additional AWS datacenter capacity in Mumbai and Hyderabad. AWS promises startups, enterprises, and government organizations access to custom AI chips, managed AI services, cloud technologies, and developer tools.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy announced the news following a meeting with Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi.

"As we grow Amazon in India, our business priorities align with India's priorities of democratizing access to AI, digitizing small businesses, creating jobs, and enabling exports, and we are investing over $48 billion in the coming five years to meet the strong demand across our business in India and to help India achieve these priorities. We are inspired by Prime Minister Modi's vision of a Viksit and Atmanirbhar Bharat [Developed and Self-Reliant India], we are committed to being a long-term partner in India's growth story," Jassy said.

Speaking to CNBC, Jassy said the capital investment plans were designed to capture an inflection point in cloud and AI markets. "When you have shifts that are this momentous, you want to make sure that you invest in such a way that you can pursue the opportunity as broadly for your customers as possible," he said.

In January last year, Amazon proposed an $11 billion investment in the US state of Georgia. AWS indicated the funds would be directed toward datacenters in Butts and Douglas counties. 

In July last year  US president Trump described India as a "dead economy," claiming that India's purchasing of energy from Russia had fueled Putin's war on Ukraine and instituting retaliatory tariffs among other trade restrictions. The tariffs were imposed under emergency-power (IEEPA) laws and were to be paid by US importers, of course, not Indian exporters. US importers and shippers last month began receiving tariff refunds after a Supreme court ruling that Trump overstepped his authority in enacting them. US Customs and Border Protection has not released specific data detailing exactly how many individual importers claimed refunds on goods shipped from India, but many have applied.

In November last year, Amazon said it would invest up to $50 billion to expand AI and supercomputing capabilities for US government customers of AWS. This would add nearly 1.3 gigawatts of additional compute capacity across AWS Top Secret, AWS Secret, and AWS GovCloud (US) Regions, it said. ®