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Adani Group, Jabil Partner to Build AI Data Centre Hardware Platform in India
The companies intend to build multi-gigawatt AI rack manufacturing capacity in India to serve hyperscalers, colocation operators and enterprise data centre customers.
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The AI layoff wave is becoming a powder keg
Something strange is happening in tech right now. Companies are posting record profits and revenue while laying off tens of thousands of people, citing AI as the official explanation. So far this year, there have been an estimated363 layoffsat tech companies this year, affecting nearly 150,000 people — a pace of about 974 people per day, 44% faster than last year — according to TrueUp, a tech job board and recruiting platform that also runs one of the most widely cited tech layoff trackers. The trend appears to be accelerating. Tech layoffs hit theirhighest single month in two yearslast month, with nearly 40,000 cuts, and AI was the most-cited reason for layoffs across every industry for the third month running, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Grey & Christmas. There’s growing skepticism that AI is really the culprit, though — that it’s more of a convenient cover story than the actual cause. Few examples illustrate the pushback better than what happened at the payments outfit Block earlier this year. After getting hammered over laying off nearlyhalf the companyearlier this year, Jack Dorsey denied the cuts were a sign of trouble, insisting instead that AI tools “are enabling a new way of working which fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a company.” But pressed by commenters on X about the bloat he’d created during the pandemic, Dorsey later acknowledged that Block had, in fact, over-hired. Other voices have also begun to weigh in, including famed VC Marc Andreessen, who recently called AI the “silver bullet excuse” for layoffs that are really about mismanagement in some cases. Inconversationwith podcaster-investor Harry Stebbings, Andreessen said, “Essentially, every large company is overstaffed. It’s at least overstaffed by 25%. I think most large companies are overstaffed by 50%. I think a lot of them are overstaffed by 75%. Now they all have the silver bullet excuse: Ah, it’s AI.” What makes this combustible is that at the very moment that tens of thousands of workers are being shown the door, a small cohort of AI insiders is becoming wealthy on a scale that’s hard to comprehend. Early last month, AI chipmaker Cerebras Systemsclosed its first dayon the Nasdaq up68%from its $185 IPO price, giving the chipmaker a market cap of roughly $67 billion — the largest US tech IPO since Snowflake’s 2020 debut. By the close, co-founders Andrew Feldman and Sean Lie werebillionaires. (The company’s shares have since fallen 30%.) SpaceX meanwhile went public on Friday and enjoys, as of this writing, a $2.1 trillion market cap, turning Musk into a paper trillionaire and potentially minting an estimated 4,400 millionaires, and around400 centimillionairesin the process — assuming the shares don’t fall. Anthropic and OpenAI arequickly inchingtoward the public market, too, both at valuations of roughly $1 trillion or more. The effects are showing up closer to home, too. In San Francisco — now home to dozens of AI companies, including the big AI labs — high-end homes are routinely selling formillions of dollars over asking price.Then there’s Mark Zuckerberg. In early March, he purchased a$170 million mansionon Miami’s “Billionaire Bunker,” setting the all-time record for the most expensive home sale in Miami-Dade County history. Two months later, Meta announced it would lay off8,000 people, or roughly 10% of its workforce. Tech titans routinely shell out jaw-dropping sums on their real estate portfolios. But these extremes come at a moment when many Americans are getting squeezed harder than they have been in years. Consider that workers with employer-sponsored health insurance face premium increases of about6% to 7%this year, more than double the rate of inflation, the cost of private health insurance has roughly doubled since 2008, and median home prices have climbed28% since early 2020, while mortgage rates have nearly doubled. In a January 2026 New York Times/Siena poll,65% of voterssaid a middle-class lifestyle is out of reach, and a more recent poll found76% of Americansnow name cost of living as their top economic concern, up sharply from 58% a year earlier. This is about more than job losses in isolation, in short. It’s tens of thousands of laid-off workers hitting an unusually unforgiving cost environment at the same time that tens of thousands of AI insiders are seeing once-in-a-generation paper wealth materialize, and being told that AI is why they’re out of a job. Whether or not that’s the real explanation — many economists point instead to tariffs, war in the Middle East, and broader economic uncertainty as the actual drivers of corporate caution — the optics are what they are. One group is getting unfathomably rich off the advancements that are supposedly replacing the other. It isn’t hard to find a precedent for what happens when that divide gets wide enough. In 2008, a financial crisis that began with loose lending and over-the-top risk-taking on Wall Street ended with bailouts for the banks that caused it, while millions of Americans lost jobs and homes in the Great Recession that followed. Three years later, that anger crystallized into Occupy Wall Street. That movement could look quaint in comparison if the current trajectory holds. Occupy Wall Street emerged from a crisis and the public anger was, at its core, about who paid for the cleanup. This time, there’s no crash to point to. Companies are profitable, AI itself is minting a new class of overnight fortunes, and the layoffs are happening anyway, with AI cited as the driver. If the optics of 2008 were, “We’re bailing out the people who broke the economy while you lose your job,” the optics here could end up being, “We’re getting richer than ever off the very tech we’re using to replace you.” Many companies — Block, Atlassian, Cloudflare, among them — have watched their stocks surge when they point to AI as the reason for cuts, so the strategy makes sense on its face. Still, they might want to consider whether that’s really the message they want to send to the people they’re laying off, and to everyone else now watching.
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India’s AI Boom Could Double Data Centre Water Consumption by 2030: Report
A CEEW report highlighted the environmental cost of AI growth, estimating that a single 100 MW hyperscale data centre can consume nearly 20 lakh litres of water every day.
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Indian IT Once Feared GCCs. Now, it is Racing to Monetise GCC-as-a-Service
GCCs are evolving into a major growth strategy as IT firms seek new revenue pools in building and running AI-native captive centres.
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EXL Strengthens India Presence with Expanded Chennai AI Hub
The expansion reflects EXL’s broader AI strategy with nearly 60% of the company’s revenue now generated from data and AI services, according to company executives.
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LTM Launches AI-Native Managed Services Platform as it Looks Beyond Manpower-led Delivery
As AI reshapes IT services, LTM's new agentic AI platform aims to automate technology operations and reduce dependence on traditional manpower-led support.
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Google DeepMind Publishes Roadmap to Superintelligence
Researchers argue progress beyond human-level AI could come through scaling, self-improvement, paradigm shifts, or multi-agent systems.
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Equal AI Raises $30 Mn Led by Prosus Ventures, Tomales Bay Capital to Scale AI Call Assistant
Equal AI will expand its AI assistant platform as it scales its consumer business and deepens its presence in India's growing AI applications market.
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‘Human Capital Does Not Become Less Valuable as Token Capital Grows,’ Says Satya Nadella
The Microsoft chief warned against a future in which a handful of AI models capture most of the economic value created by AI.
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What is UiPath’s Moat in 2026?
“UiPath is no longer an RPA company. We are an RPA plus process orchestration plus solutions company,” says CTO Raghu Malpani.
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As AI companies race to go public, who else is along for the ride?
SpaceX went public this week inthe largest IPO ever, making CEO Elon Muskthe world’s first trillionaire. Despite its name, SpaceX has been emphasizing the potential ofits costly AI business, and competitorsOpenAIandAnthropicmay soon follow with their own public market debuts. So on the latest episode ofTechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Sean O’Kane, and I discussed what’s looking like a hot IPO summer. “We have SpaceX not only sucking up just a huge chunk of the money that’s available on public markets, but also really stress testing the limits of what a public company can be and how much it can be controlled by one single person,” Sean said. “My eye is really on these other tech companies that will go public and how much they will try to emulate.” Kirsten also noted that there are other startups trying to “ride that SpaceX IPO wave,” for example by raising money for orbital data centers after SpaceX helped to popularize the concept. “So there’s a ripple effect that’s happening throughout the market that I think is probably even more interesting than just the headline, ‘SpaceX makes Elon a trillionaire,’” she said. Keep reading for a preview of our conversation, edited for length and clarity. Anthony Ha:I want to zoom out a little bit from just the SpaceX IPO, because beyond the Elon Musk of it all, it’s the beginning of what could be a [series] of different IPOs for different AI companies. We’ve talked about Anthropic confidentially filing to go public, and now OpenAI has done the same. How excited are either of you about this? Kirsten Korosec:I want to start off by saying that I love Julie Bort’s story, which I think sums it up pretty nicely. It’s a great headline, so I’m gonna read it here: “It’s not FAANG anymore, it’s MANGOS.” FAANG being Facebook, which is now Meta; Amazon; Apple; Netflix; Google, now Alphabet. Now it’s shifted, and we’ve got Meta, Anthropic, NVIDIA, Google, OpenAI, SpaceX. [We’ve still got] massive tech companies, surely, but there is a shift here, right? First of all, we’ve got a bunch of AI labs in there, and that’s very different. Netflix gets booted out of there, a giant streaming service. And so to me, it’s an interesting shift in terms of public markets and the vast amount of money and capital available in the public markets shifting away from consumer [and] social networks and towards, specifically, AI labs and other, more innovative deeptech, such as SpaceX. So I think that’s the most interesting thing — aside from the fact that this summer is going to keep us all very busy as reporters, more than probably any other summer in a while. Sean O’Kane:You know, once upon a time I wanted to be a lawyer, and one of the reasons I didn’t was because I hated the paperwork that was going to be involved. And here I am looking forward to reading hundreds more pages of SEC filings this summer — talk about a beach read. It’s a moment we’ve been anticipating for a while. We’ve spent the last few years really wondering if the IPO market was going to quote-unquote “open back up” after a lot of consternation about private markets, and mockery about people reaching their like Series [whatever] fundraising round. This is a good stress test — I mean, “good,” take that word however you want — a good stress test of public markets in general. We have SpaceX not only sucking up just a huge chunk of the money that’s available on public markets, but also really stress testing the limits of what a public company can be and how much it can be controlled by one single person. My eye is really on these other tech companies that will go public and how much they will try to emulate. A thing that I keep saying and thinking about with SpaceX is, they’re really trying to take some of the most extreme aspects of Google and Meta’s original IPOs back in the early 2000s and mashing it up with that “We’ll lose money forever” with Amazon. And I’m curious how much Anthropic and OpenAI will try to do the same. Will they remake themselves in the image of SpaceX? Or will they try to put themselves in a different light? Anthony:One aspect that really got driven home as I was reading about the OpenAI IPO is also the extent to which some of this is also a bit of a race in terms of timing. I think we can confidently say at this point, SpaceX is first out the gate, which probably has some advantages and disadvantages. It’s also a bit of a different company because it’s billing itself as an AI company, but obviously has a bunch of other stuff going on, too. But there is a sense in which, at least according to some analysts, OpenAI and Anthropic may both want to go before the other one, because there’s only a finite amount of capital, a finite amount of interest. At some point some of these valuations have to start coming back down to Earth, and so they may both be scrambling to be first. Kirsten:I mean, there’s very much a race between Anthropic and OpenAI. You’re even seeing OpenAI talk about slashing prices, and they’re certainly going to be competing on the IPO calendar. But that is very short-term thinking. If they’re smart, they should be much more concerned about the long-term play here. To me, what’s really interesting is while Anthropic, OpenAI, and SpaceX all prepare for these moments, there are a host of other companies out there that are raising money on the backs of the success of companies like SpaceX, or going into SPACs. Just today, for instance, or as we’re recording this, a company calledQuantum Space is doing a SPACand absolutely trying to ride that SpaceX IPO wave. We’ve got a host of other startups that our reporter Tim Ferholz has reported on that are clearly — they’re not going to go public, right? But if SpaceX is successful with space data centers, they’re raising money off of that potential and they’re building businesses on that potential. So there’s a ripple effect that’s happening throughout the market that I think is probably even more interesting than just the headline, “SpaceX makes Elon a trillionaire.” Sean:The commonly accepted theory in Silicon Valley is that AI is remaking the economy, but because of itsuse. AI is actuallyalreadyremaking the economy — just because of how people are trying to build it. We have everything that you just described, we have these other companies rushing to public markets. And I think that’s a really good point to think about: Will they ever regret rushing to public markets? But we even have companies like Ford and General Motors who are pivoting their unused battery creation capacity to be energy providers for data centers. And Ford’s stock shot up when it announced what is honestlya pretty modest-looking energy storage business, in comparison to something like Tesla. And Tim De Chant had a really great series of stories this week aboutGM’s pivot, as well. The economy’s already being remade. Whether that’s durable, again, that’s the question, but it’s happening right now. Kirsten:That is actually a really good point, because to me, I want to say five, six, seven, eight years ago, there were all these headlines of “the next Tesla killer” and these automakers and other companies are still chasing trying to recreate all these various businesses, and specifically the strategies of Elon Musk-based businesses. They haven’t learned their lesson. I wish I could communicate this to all the automaker CEOs out there: I get it that you have a lot of unused batteries and you want to pivot to something else, but trying to model your business after Tesla or SpaceX and others, it doesn’t always work. Perhaps look elsewhere. Sean:So Ford shouldn’t get into space data centers. Is what you’re saying? Kirsten:No, they shouldn’t. But just watch. This is going to happen.
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As Anthropic suspends access to new models, India debates its AI future
Anthropic’s sudden move tosuspend access to its newest AI models following a U.S. government directivehas raised fresh questions across the global technology industry. In India, the decision has reignited a long-running debate over whether one of the world’s largest AI markets can afford to rely on technologies built and controlled elsewhere. Theannouncementcame late Friday, when Anthropic said it had received the U.S. government directive requiring it to suspend access to itsrecently launched Fable 5 and Mythos 5models for all foreign nationals, including its own foreign national employees. The move came shortly after the company announced apartnership with Indian IT services giant Tata Consultancy Servicesto expand enterprise AI adoption in India, underlining how closely the country’s AI ambitions have become tied to technologies developed and governed in the U.S. While the broader implications remain unclear, some reports said the initial security concerns werefirst reported to the government by Amazon CEO Andy Jassy. And The Informationsaidthe White House is unlikely to extend similar restrictions to other AI companies and is privately blaming Anthropic’s handling of alleged jailbreak vulnerabilities. Anthropic has disputed the government’s characterization and argued the action should not have been taken. Regardless, the development has triggered debate among Indian founders, investors, and policy experts over whether the country should accelerate efforts to build domestic AI capabilities, deepen investment in open-source alternatives, or continue relying on a handful of U.S. frontier model providers. For some, the episode is a wake-up call on technological dependence. For others, it is a reminder that access to increasingly critical AI systems can be shaped by geopolitical decisions beyond India’s control. India has become one of the most important markets for frontier AI companies. Anthropic and OpenAI have both described the South Asian nation as theirsecond-largest marketafter the U.S., reflecting its growing importance in the global AI race. The companies have alreadyset up their officesin India,expanded local hiring,partnerships, andenterprise initiativesin recent months, betting on India’s vast base of developers, startups, and businesses to accelerate adoption of their latest technologies. For many in India’s technology sector, Anthropic’s Friday announcement was about more than just one AI company. It reopened questions about the country’s long-term AI strategy and whether India could afford to remain dependent on a small number of foreign frontier AI providers. “It completely changes things,” said Aakrit Vaish, founder of Indian AI venture platformActivate, referring to Anthropic’s decision. “I think this materially changes the way all of us should be thinking about sovereign AI in India.” Vaish told TechCrunch that he woke up on Saturday morning “shocked and confused” by the announcement and said it strengthened the case for developing domestic AI capabilities. He expects startups to increasingly turn to open-source models and plans to encourage companies in his portfolio to reduce their dependence on a small number of frontier AI providers. For some founders, the bigger concern was what restrictions on frontier AI access could mean for competitiveness. Vijay Rayapati, co-founder and CEO ofAtomicwork, told TechCrunch that the episode highlighted the risks facing startups whose teams span multiple countries if access to advanced AI systems increasingly becomes subject to geopolitical restrictions. Atomicwork has around 25 employees in the U.S., though much of its product engineering team is based in Bengaluru, India. “If your AI team is not made up entirely of U.S. citizens, you are at a competitive disadvantage,” Rayapati said, arguing that unequal access to frontier AI models could give some companies a significant edge over rivals. The concern comes as parts of India’s tech sector are already grappling with questions about how AI could reshape the economics of global talent. This week, U.S. real estate technology company Opendoorshut its India officeless than two years after expanding in the country, with CEO Kaz Nejatian citing a push to bring operational work closer to customers in the U.S. and a shift toward smaller AI-native teams. While Opendoor did not specify how much of the decision was driven by AI-related efficiencies, the move added to a broader debate about how advances in AI could affect the future of global technology work and what that might mean for India’s position as an engineering talent hub. In addition to startups and AI builders, the Anthropic episode also prompted a broader debate among India’s technology leaders about dependence on foreign AI infrastructure. Sridhar Vembu, founder of Indian SaaS company Zoho, said the move showed that “technology is the ultimate weapon” and urged Indian organizations to increasingly embrace smaller and open-source models. “What can our government do right now? Ensure that orgs in India embrace smaller models, both Indian and Chinese open source ones,” Vembuwroteon X. Investor and former Infosys executive Mohandas Pairespondedto Vembu on X, arguing that the development highlighted the need for a far more ambitious national AI strategy and calling on the government to substantially increase investments in AI, computing infrastructure, and deep technology. “We are way behind and need a national mission to get going quickly,” Pai wrote, urging the government to create an annual ₹500 billion (about $5 billion) fund for AI and deep tech, alongside a ₹2 trillion (around $21 billion) credit guarantee program to support cloud infrastructure, hardware, and semiconductor development. Pai’s proposal would dwarf India’s existing AI efforts. In 2024, New Delhiapprovedthe IndiaAI Mission with an outlay of ₹103.72 billion (about $1.2 billion) over five years, aimed at expanding compute infrastructure, supporting startups, and developing indigenous AI capabilities. Despite growing interest in AI and New Delhi’s push to develop domestic capabilities, India remains a relatively small player in frontier model development. Only a handful of startups are pursuing foundational AI models, includingSarvam, whichreleased open-source modelsearlier this year. However, another high-profile AI startup,Krutrim,pivoted toward cloud and AI infrastructure servicesafter initially positioning itself around foundational model development. Much of India’s AI ecosystem has instead concentrated on applications and specialized models built on top of existing foundation models. Recent examples include Avataar AI, whichlaunched a video-generation modelearlier this week aimed at providing a lower-cost alternative to offerings from rivals including Google’s Veo, Kling, Luma, and Runway. Not everyone agrees that the primary challenge is a lack of capital. Responding to Pai’s comments, Lightspeed partner Hemant Mohapatra argued that the biggest constraints to building globally competitive AI companies are talent, access to computing resources, and execution, rather than simply the size of investment commitments. Mohapatra estimated that training a frontier AI model could cost anywhere from hundreds of millions to several billion dollars, depending on the approach, but said successful AI companies have historically scaled their capital requirements over time as adoption grew. Yet for some policy observers, the implications extend well beyond AI startups or model providers. Prasanto Roy, a New Delhi-based technology policy expert who advises multinational companies, said the episode would likely reinforce concerns within the Indian government about strategic autonomy, comparing it to the lesson many countries drew from Russia’s loss of access to SWIFT and other parts of the global financial system following its invasion of Ukraine. He told TechCrunch that the move was likely to provoke a significant nationalist backlash in India and described it as a poorly considered decision by Washington, with consequences extending far beyond Anthropic itself. “Even if this is corrected or reversed, the Anthropic episode shows there’s no such thing as a geopolitically neutral foreign LLM,” Roy said. “American AI models are bound to American geopolitics.”
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