Maria George

Google just made $15 billion bet this week on India’s AI future With its largest ever investment outside the U.S., Google will build a gigawatt scale AI data centre hub in Visakhapatnam, partnering with Airtel and AdaniConneX The investment does more than expand compute capacity. It rewrites who owns the backbone of value creation. When AI infrastructure lives onshore, latency drops, data control strengthens, and sovereign technology becomes more than rhetoric But there’s friction. Karnataka’s leadership slammed Andhra Pradesh’s incentives for Google as fiscally reckless. Andhra’s response? They pushed back, claiming healthy competition and calling out Bangalore’s infrastructure flaws Here’s the twist few will admit: this isn’t just big tech doubling down. India is quietly transforming from being a global AI consumer to becoming a global AI backbone. For founders, that means your infrastructure constraints just got shorter. For cloud players, you’ll need to rethink architectures where data never leaves the country. For policy makers, you’re staring at the chance to define the rules for data sovereignty, energy usage, cross-border flows all before they solidify If Google’s $15B shows up as more than a headline and instead becomes the spine of next gen India tech we’ll look back on 2025 as the year the center quietly shifted Quietly building backbone. Loudly shifting the map

42

2 Comments

H-1B just got a lot more expensive, and the impact will be felt across hiring strategies. The recent proclamation introduced a $100,000 fee for H-1B petitions filed for workers outside the U.S. While current visa holders aren’t directly impacted, the ripple effects are already clear: 🛑 Many employers are pausing sponsorships for new hires. 📈 The cost will likely push companies to reserve visas for senior or highly specialized roles. 🌍 Some industries, especially IT and consulting, may lean more heavily on offshore or remote delivery models. This isn’t just a policy change, it’s a structural shift. Access to global talent has always been a competitive edge for U.S. companies. Now, with costs and uncertainty rising, leaders in Talent Acquisition, People Ops, and Recruiting Ops will need to get sharper about prioritization, scenario planning, and retention. For me, the big takeaway is that global hiring can’t just be reactive anymore. It requires intentional strategy to balance cost, compliance, and business need. 👉 How is your organization preparing for this new landscape?

10

1 Comment

The new $100,000 per year fee for H1B visa applicants may have some unintended side effects. Existing H1B workers might be worth holding on to, since they would be much more costly to re-hire in the future. Better to layoff US citizens since those can be rehired with no such added fees. New and rapidly growing companies may decide to expand in Canada or Mexico instead, depriving the US government of their income taxes and other auxiliary benefits of highly skilled & paid workers in the economy.

53

42 Comments