According to the Stanford Artificial Intelligence (AI) Index 2025, India’s strength in AI lies in its talent pool and entrepreneurial activity. The report states that despite India’s leadership in AI hiring vibrancy, it faces challenges in retaining talent, attracting private investment, and building intellectual property (IP) capabilities.
India recorded the highest growth in AI-related hiring relative to overall recruitment in 2024, with a year-over-year increase of 33.4 per cent. This was followed by Brazil (30.8 per cent) and Saudi Arabia (28.7 per cent). The report also placed India second globally in terms of AI skill penetration between 2015 and 2024, just behind the United States.
Despite this, India struggles to retain AI talent. The country scored -1.55 on the net AI talent migration metric, indicating a net outflow of talent, losing approximately two AI professionals per 10,000 LinkedIn users. In contrast, countries like the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Luxembourg are emerging as net gainers of AI talent.
On the investment front, India ranked seventh globally in cumulative private AI investment from 2013 to 2024, drawing $11.3 billion, still far behind the US, which leads with $471 billion. Other countries ahead of India include China, the UK, Canada, Israel, and Germany. However, India rose to fourth place in terms of newly funded AI startups in 2024, with 74 companies securing investments.
The report also flagged India’s $1.25 billion IndiaAI Mission as a major global policy initiative. Still, public optimism around AI appears to be waning—only 62 per cent of Indian respondents in 2024 agreed that AI offers more benefits than drawbacks, down from 71 per cent in 2022.
