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Thomas Kurian
Thomas Kurian GOOG
CEO of Google Cloud, Google Cloud
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Google Cloud CEO On $15B India Bet, Sovereign AI Push & More

📅 Jul 29, 2026 The Economic Times Podcasts 18 MIN 79 VIEWS 36 SEGMENTS · 3 SPEAKERS
In this conversation with ET's editor technology Surabhi Agarwal, Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian discusses the company's expanding footprint in India, including bringing Gemini Flash 3.5 and Gemini Enterprise to sovereign infrastructure, and scaling local engineering talent through forward-deployed teams and partnerships like Mission Karmayogi. Kurian addresses the $15 billion investment with Adani and Airtel, India's growing role as an AI export hub, and ambitions around server manufacturing. He also weighs in on sovereign AI becoming a global norm, Google Cloud's $460 billion order backlog,...

What Thomas Kurian said

Written from the verified transcript and checked against it. Every figure links to the moment it was said.

Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, announced three initiatives for India: bringing Gemini Flash 3.5 and Gemini Enterprise to sovereign infrastructure in India, building a forward-deployed engineering hub to serve Asia, and partnering with the Ministry of Skill Development to launch an AI-enabled university pilot. He cited usage by Indian firms like Pocket FM, CRED, HDFC Bank, Tata Steel, Wipro, TCS, and Sarvam. Kurian affirmed a long-term commitment to sovereignty, noting Google Cloud has two regions and six data centers in India, with sovereign offerings in 22 countries. He corrected the revenue figure to $20 billion quarterly and stated a remaining performance obligation of $460 billion. On the $15 billion India investment, he focused on getting the data center live and expanding as demand grows. He discussed AI server manufacturing, mentioning TSMC as a silicon partner and ongoing India discussions. Kurian also highlighted AI adoption across Indian industries, from MakeMyTrip to Apollo Hospitals, framing it as more advanced due to large-scale consumer platforms. He dismissed market share concerns as a function of starting later than Amazon and Microsoft, and acknowledged competitive pressure from AI-native challengers.

Key takeaways

  1. Gemini Flash 3.5 and Gemini Enterprise will run on sovereign infrastructure in India for local processing.
  2. Google Cloud's remaining performance obligation is $460 billion, with $20 billion quarterly revenue.
  3. Forward-deployed engineering hub in India will serve customers across Asia.
  4. Sovereign cloud offerings available in 22 countries, with India getting the latest models.
  5. Kurian refrained from committing to new India investments or manufacturing timelines, focusing on current commitments.

Numbers and commitments

FigureWhat it refers toTypeAt
20 million Public servants served by Karmayogi platform across 800 districts metric 3:12
22 countries Countries with sovereign cloud offerings metric 6:41
460 billion Remaining performance obligation metric 8:02
20 billion Quarterly revenue for Google Cloud metric 8:02
135,000 companies Companies using Google's AI metric 8:02

Chapters

  1. 0:00India AI announcements
  2. 6:21Digital sovereignty commitment
  3. 8:02Financial performance and obligations
  4. 10:01India investment and data center expansion
  5. 11:36AI server manufacturing plans
  6. 12:46AI adoption across Indian industries
  7. 15:18Hyperscaler competition and growth
  8. 16:34Responding to AI-native challengers

Questions asked in this interview

8
  1. 1:11You know, how do things look from your lens?
  2. 5:34But also, is it kind of making the technology industry more fragmented than before?
  3. 7:24So, what is your plan to make sure that you know, you have access to computer so that in a way you can quickly catapult much closer to your rivals?
  4. 9:24Um, coming to your India investment, I think 15 billion dollars that you did with with Adani and Airtel, right?
  5. 11:13So, what are your plans on that front?
  6. 12:18What is your observation on this?
  7. 14:55What is your plan of action to make sure that you know is Google is right up there at the top?
  8. 16:00And does it sometimes concern you in terms of, you know, what they bring to the market table?
Anirban Choudhury 0:09 ↗
Google Cloud is doubling down on India. It's rushing to bring its latest Gemini models on to sovereign infrastructure in the market, building an engineering hub to serve customers across Asia, and pushing ahead with its $15 billion AI hub, Google's biggest bet outside of the US. In this conversation, Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian talks to ET's tech editor Surbhi Agarwal about how India fits into Google Cloud's manufacturing, talent, and global growth plans. It's Thursday, the 30th of July. I'm Anirban Choudhury. This is the morning brief.
Surbhi Agarwal 1:11 ↗
Maybe I'll just begin with, you know, like the last announcement that Google Cloud did in India with the whole AI hub getting, you know, inaugurated. You know, where does India fit in Google Cloud's scheme of things, not just sort of as a consumer of AI, but also as a producer of AI? You know, how do things look from your lens?
Thomas Kurian 1:30 ↗
We're seeing a lot of companies that we're working with in India. And I think we have three important announcements that we're making on this trip. The first one is for Indian customers, including regulated companies, government, etc. We're bringing our latest model, Gemini Flash 3.5, and Gemini Enterprise, which is agent building platform, to serve from machines in India. You know, this is on sovereign infrastructure in India that allows everybody who has, you know, necessity to have local processing with both the models and the data being hosted in India to be able to do that locally in the country. So, we're expanding the commitment to digital sovereignty and this is one more example of our strict in-country machine learning process commitment that we made to India and we are following through on it with the latest model. Okay, so that's number one.
Surbhi Agarwal 2:34 ↗
Yeah.
Thomas Kurian 2:34 ↗
The second one is we see India as a place to build expertise in both using AI, but also uh bringing the skills of Indian software engineers to companies around the world.
Surbhi Agarwal 2:49 ↗
Mhm.
Thomas Kurian 2:50 ↗
So, we are scaling things in three different ways in India with direct investment from our own engineering workforce and our ecosystem partnerships to build digital capability and to make India an AI hub not just for India to become proficient in AI, but for India's expertise in AI to serve other markets.
Surbhi Agarwal 3:12 ↗
Right.
Thomas Kurian 3:12 ↗
So, the first thing that we're doing is we've built in a hub for what we call forward deployed engineering. These are our expert engineers who work with customers. These forward deployed engineers will serve customers not just in India, but also across Asia. And the core focus is to help them build on our AI platform and move workloads from experimentation to full-scale operations. We're also accelerating Mission Karmayogi's vision of building a civil service by providing a central, secure, resilient infrastructure for the Karmayogi platform which serves to the best of our understanding 20 million public servants across 800 districts. This is second to bring that AI skill set to the broadest set of people.
Surbhi Agarwal 4:04 ↗
Mhm.
Thomas Kurian 4:05 ↗
And then finally, we're also partnering with the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship to launch India's first AI-enabled university pilot to serve as a national blueprint for AI-ready institutions and AI-ready education. Third one that we are very proud of is what we're doing to enable lots of people to use AI, but also produce AI. So, there are examples of things we've done. Pocket FM, you know, they have launched a partnership with us to build your AI-native entertainment platform.
Surbhi Agarwal 4:42 ↗
Mhm.
Thomas Kurian 4:42 ↗
You know, this allows them to use AI power for storytelling. CRED, which is in the news given all the announcements with them and Meta. CRED users are AI portfolio for real-time voice agents and also to optimize software engineering. HDFC Bank, Tata Steel, Wipro, TCS, they're all building and using our AI-powered platform for agents. We're also helping companies in India, for example, Sarvam.
Surbhi Agarwal 5:13 ↗
Yeah.
Thomas Kurian 5:13 ↗
our sovereign AI ecosystem and they're building sovereign Sarvam Translate and all the new things that they're doing, building local models. Uh they're extending from on our platform and they started and are using Gemma 3, our open-source model. So, these are all examples of companies that we're enabling with AI.
Surbhi Agarwal 5:34 ↗
Right. Great. So, uh very interesting, I think, set of announcements that you just mentioned. I'll start with the first one about the sovereign AI, you know, and I think sovereign AI is has never been so important as in the last few days where we've seen, you know, the US government sort of stopping access to a few models by Anthropic, by OpenAI. And all of this these developments have made countries, especially India, think about, you know, how they can be more sort of self-reliant, more sovereign. Not just for India, but globally. You know, is sovereign AI going to be the new normal? Right? How do you look at it and what kind of an opportunity does it present for companies like yours to make sure that countries feel more safe and secure? But also, is it kind of making the technology industry more fragmented than before?
Thomas Kurian 6:21 ↗
So, we you know, we've had a long-term commitment to sovereignty
Surbhi Agarwal 6:25 ↗
Yeah.

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APA, MLA, BibTeX
APA

Kurian, T. (2026, July 29). Google Cloud CEO On $15B India Bet, Sovereign AI Push & More [Interview transcript]. The Economic Times Podcasts. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1142487/

MLA

Thomas Kurian. "Google Cloud CEO On $15B India Bet, Sovereign AI Push & More." The Economic Times Podcasts, 29 Jul. 2026. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1142487/.

BibTeX 
@misc{kurian2026_1142487,
  author       = {Thomas Kurian},
  title        = {Google Cloud CEO On $15B India Bet, Sovereign AI Push \& More},
  howpublished = {Interview transcript, The Economic Times Podcasts. CEOInterviews.AI},
  year         = {2026},
  month        = {jul},
  url          = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1142487/},
  note         = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}