Can India rival US, China, UAE in AI with Google’s new undersea cables?

Dubai: Google’s decision to build new undersea internet cables linking India to multiple continents has raised a bigger question: can India realistically challenge the United States and China in artificial intelligence — and match the UAE’s rapid progress in AI adoption?

The short answer: not yet — but the gap is narrowing, and the comparison with the UAE is becoming more relevant.

Google said it will build new subsea (undersea) fibre-optic cables connecting India directly to Singapore, South Africa, Australia and the United States.

These cables will support Google’s planned $15 billion AI infrastructure hub in Visakhapatnam, on India’s east coast. It will be the company’s largest AI hub outside the US.

Subsea cables carry most of the world’s internet traffic. For AI, they matter because training and running advanced systems requires moving massive volumes of data between data centres across the world. Faster and more reliable connections allow AI systems to operate at scale.

For India, the cables are less about speed and more about resilience and independence.At present, most international data flows through landing points in Mumbai and Chennai.

Google’s project will turn Visakhapatnam into a new global gateway, spreading risk and improving network reliability. Google said the project would “increase the resilience of India’s digital backbone and improve economic security.”

Simply put, India gets:

India’s AI push is also being strengthened through a new partnership with the UAE. Abu Dhabi-based technology group G42, working with US chipmaker Cerebras Systems and India’s Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, is building a national AI supercomputer in India. Mohamed Bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence is also part of the collaboration.

The system, expected to deliver up to 8 exaflops of computing power, will support AI research, startups, government projects and public institutions. Data will remain under Indian control, while benefiting from UAE investment and technical expertise, highlighting the UAE’s growing role as a global AI partner rather than just a domestic adopter.

Strong digital infrastructure on its own does not make India an AI superpower. While improved connectivity is an essential foundation, it is only the first step and must be matched by advances in research, hardware, and large-scale deployment.

The US and China still dominate AI because they control:

China also benefits from close integration between the state and major technology firms, while the US leads in frontier AI research and venture capital. India remains dependent on foreign chipmakers and cloud providers for most advanced AI workloads.

India’s main advantage comes from its scale, rather than from leadership in core AI technologies or frontier research.

The country has:

Last year, India rose to third place in a global AI competitiveness ranking compiled by researchers at Stanford University, overtaking Japan and South Korea.

At the same time, companies are expanding AI capacity inside the country. Nvidia announced partnerships with Indian cloud providers to supply processors for AI data centres.

This suggests India is becoming an important location for deploying AI systems, even if it is not yet leading in core research or hardware.

While India is building scale, the UAE has focused on execution.

The UAE ranks among the world’s leading countries for AI talent investment and resilience, placing sixth globally for government and corporate spending on AI skills and ninth for AI-driven resilience.

AI is already embedded across the economy, including:

By mid-2025, nearly 90% of organisations in the UAE were using AI in at least one business function, giving it one of the highest adoption rates globally.

The UAE has also positioned itself as a neutral and open AI hub through open-source models such as Falcon, strengthening its global credibility.

Abu Dhabi is also backing its AI ambitions with capital. The emirate has emerged as a major global investor in artificial intelligence through MGX, a government-backed fund that has taken stakes in leading AI developers including OpenAI and Anthropic.

The fund aims to build more than $100 billion in assets and could invest up to $10 billion a year in technology, positioning Abu Dhabi not just as an adopter of AI, but as a financial backer shaping the sector’s global direction.

Sundar Pichai, head of Google’s parent company Alphabet, said India is “uniquely positioned at this moment” to advance in AI.

He described India’s future in the sector as having an “extraordinary trajectory” and said the country is already one of the largest markets for Google’s Gemini AI chatbot.

That highlights a key difference. India may not invent the most advanced AI models first — but it could become one of the largest places where AI is used, trained and scaled.

At least in the near term, it cannot, despite clear progress in infrastructure and adoption. India still lags in:

While Google’s undersea cables and strategic partnerships like the supercomputer project strengthen India’s long-term position and improve its competitiveness, AI leadership depends on how quickly infrastructure is turned into results. UAE is already proving capability.