Microsoft’s CoreAI EVP Jay Parikh: ‘Next phase of AI won’t be defined by who builds the best models, but by …’

Jay Parikh, executive vice president of Microsoft's CoreAI group has said that the next stage of the artificial intelligence race will not depend only on who creates the most powerful AI models, but on who can successfully deploy them at scale with trust and real-world impact. In a blog post discussing India’s growing AI ecosystem, the Microsoft executive highlighted the country’s developer community, enterprise adoption and digital infrastructure as key strengths shaping the future of AI. Parikh also pointed to India’s rapid AI deployment across industries and said the country is increasingly becoming an important center for global AI innovation and implementation.Jay Parikh said India is “uniquely positioned” in the AI era because of its combination of developer talent, enterprise AI adoption and digital public infrastructure. “The next phase of AI won’t be defined by who builds the best models, but by who can deploy them at scale with trust, speed, and real-world impact,” he wrote.According to Parikh, India is now home to GitHub’s largest developer community, with more than 27 million developers and over 2 million new users joining the platform in 2026 alone. He also said Indian developers are the second-largest contributors to open-source projects globally, including AI-focused projects.Parikh pointed to companies such as Sarvam AI, Krutrim and Qure.ai as examples of Indian firms building AI products for global markets. The Microsoft executive also highlighted India’s digital public infrastructure, including the country’s payments network Unified Payments Interface or UPI. He said the platform now processes more than 20 billion transactions a month.Parikh added that India is moving toward what “could become the world’s first large-scale AI public infrastructure,” where AI systems may become part of services including healthcare, education and financial systems.He also cited reports showing Indian enterprises are adopting AI faster than many global peers, with several companies already moving AI tools from testing stages into live production environments.