India woos U.S. chip giants as it looks to become a semiconductor superpower
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has looked to woo American semiconductor firms to invest in his country.
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Chief executives of some of the U.S.’s top semiconductor firms poured praise on India’s technology sector at an event on Friday attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the world’s fifth-largest economy looks to position itself as a global chip powerhouse.
The CEOs of Micron and Cadence and senior executives at Applied Materials and AMD were on stage at SemiconIndia alongside Modi, speaking about their investments in India’s chip market. Ajit Manocha, the CEO of U.S.-based industry body SEMI, was also in attendance.
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“For the first time in India’s history, geopolitics, domestic policies and private sector capacity are aligned in India’s favor to become a player in semiconductor production,” Manocha said during a keynote speech.
“We will look back in the year 2023 … as a milestone year in which things began to take shape.”
The event with some of the world’s biggest chip firms highlights India’s ambitions to become a major hub for semiconductors alongside the likes of the U.S., Taiwan and South Korea.
India’s chip strategy
India’s chip strategy consists of two major parts. The first is luring in foreign firms to set up operations and invest in the country while the second is on forming alliances with other key semiconductor nations like the U.S.
New Delhi has introduced supportive policies for the semiconductor sector. In December, the government greenlit a $10 billion incentive plan for the semiconductor industry. This is open to foreign firms too.
And last month, Modi visited the U.S. where he said India would work with America on semiconductors and other areas.
At SemiconIndia, the American chip firms in attendance spoke about their investments in India and announced new ones, highlighting India’s focus on attracting foreign companies.
AMD said it plans to invest around $400 million in India over the next five years. This includes a new campus in Bangalore that will be the company’s largest design center.
“India teams will be pivotal in advancing AI machine learning and both hardware and software capabilities,” Mark Papermaster, CTO of AMD, said during a keynote speech on Friday.
Last month, Micron announced plans to set up a semiconductor assembly and testing facility in the state of Gujarat in India. Micron’s investment will total up to $825 million.
“We are hopeful that this investment will help catalyze other investments in the sector, strengthen indigenous manufacturing capability, encourage innovation and support broader job creation,” Sanjay Mehrotra, CEO of Micron, said on Friday.
India’s IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said Friday that construction on this plant would start “soon.”
Foxconn’s India setback
One other notable attendee was Young Liu, chairman of Foxconn, which is the Taiwanese company that assembles Apple’s iPhones. Over the past couple years, Foxconn has made a push into semiconductors.
It’s biggest effort came last year when Foxconn agreed with Indian metals-to-oil conglomerate Vedanta to set up a semiconductor and display production plant in India as part of a $19.5 billion joint venture. However, Foxconn pulled out of the venture this month, dealing a blow to both the company and India’s ambitions.
Still, it hasn’t seemed to deter both companies. Liu’s presence at the event signals Foxconn’s ambition to invest in India. Liu told CNBC-TV18 on Friday that Foxconn is looking to invest $2 billion in India over the next five years.
Vedanta Group Chair Anil Agarwal said on Friday at SemiconIndia that the company has “identified world class partners for technology and are in the process of tying up with them” in semiconductors.
India’s challenges
The high-profile event with all the CEOs masks some of India’s challenges in the semiconductor industry.
One area that India could be attractive in is the packaging and testing of semiconductors, according to Pranay Kotasthane, deputy director of the Takshashila Institution. This requires relatively low-skilled labor but high capital investment, which India could have. Yet no major Taiwanese firm in this segment of the market as set up shop in India.
“The lack of policy consistency and high import tariffs are the bottlenecks that can explain why Taiwanese companies haven’t moved ahead,” Kotasthane said.
Meanwhile, in the area of foundries, companies that actually manufacture semiconductors, there haven’t been good technology partners for those trying to set up shop in India. The chip manufacturing tie-up between Vedanta and Foxconn reportedly relied on technology from European semiconductor firm STMicroelectronics.
“None of the fab proposals have yet been able to find good technology partners,” Kotasthane said.
Still, analysts have pointed toward India’s huge domestic market and other factors such as incentives as reasons for optimism on the country’s chip market.
On Friday, Modi touted India’s credentials.
“Skilled engineers and designers are our strength. Anyone who wants to be a part of the world’s most vibrant and unified market has faith in India,” the Indian prime minister said.
Emilija Manevska | Moment | Getty Images
Artificial intelligence startup Cursor on Thursday announced it has closed a $2.3 billion funding round at a $29.3 billion post-money valuation, nearly triple what it was worth as of its last raise in June.
Tune in at 4:30 p.m. ET as Cursor CEO Michael Truell joins “Closing Bell: Overtime” to discuss the funding round. Watch in real time on CNBC+ or the CNBC Pro stream.
Cursor built a popular AI coding tool that helps software developers generate, edit and review code. Its parent company, Anysphere, is an applied research lab that was founded in 2022.
Cursor is one of just a handful of AI startups, including OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, Safe Superintelligence and Thinking Machines, that are valued at over $10 billion.
Investors including Accel, Thrive Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, DST Global, Coatue, Nvidia and Google participated in its latest funding round, according to a blog post.
“This funding will allow us to invest deeply in our research and build Cursor’s next magical moments,” Cursor said.
Since the tool first launched in 2023, Cursor said it has crossed $1 billion in annualized revenue and swelled to more than 300 employees.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang called the company his “favorite enterprise AI service” in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” in October.
The company said its in-house models generate more code than “almost” any other large language models in the world.
The coding tool market has grown more crowded in recent months as it’s proved to be a lucrative AI use case. Cursor competes with companies like OpenAI, Anthropic and Cognition, which acquired the AI coding startup Windsurf in July.
OpenAI approached Anysphere earlier this year about potentially purchasing Cursor, but the deal failed to gain traction, as CNBC previously reported. OpenAI was also briefly in talks to acquire Windsurf before ultimately introducing its own coding tool called Codex in May.
In September, Anthropic said its coding tool Claude Code has already generated more than $500 million in run-rate revenue for the company since its full launch in May. As of July, Windsurf was generating $82 million in annual recurring revenue, Cognition said in a blog post at the time.
“Internally, we often talk about how high the ceiling is for how great Cursor can become, and how much work still remains to get there,” Cursor said.
WATCH: Every engineer is being turbocharged by AI, says Macroscope CEO Kayvon Beykpour
Verizon chairman Mark Bertolini said Thursday that the company’s new CEO, former PayPal boss Dan Schulman, is working to revive Verizon from its period of share losses under former CEO Hans Vestberg.
Bertolini, who is also the Oscar Health CEO and who was named Verizon chairman last month, told CNBC’s Becky Quick on “Squawk Box” that the company needs to “do something different” as it undergoes its leadership change.
“Verizon has gone from number one in market cap, bond ratings and market share to number three. And the network isn’t as differentiated as it used to be, in large part because everybody’s been spending money to put these 5G networks in place,” Bertolini said. “So losing 30% share over the last eight years is an issue, and we have to do something different.”
In October, the company announced Schulman would be replacing Vestberg, who had led the company since 2018. In a statement at the time, Schulman said Verizon was at a “critical juncture” and that he believed the company had a “clear opportunity to redefine our trajectory.”
Schulman previously led PayPal through significant revenue growth and has served on Verizon’s board of directors since 2018.
Vestberg is remaining on the the board of directors until the 2026 annual meeting and serving as a special advisor through Oct. 4, 2026.
Bertolini said Thursday that Schulman is evaluating underlying cost structures and other aspects of the company to ensure its success.
“We believe that once we have that plan in place, we’ll have a good story,” Bertolini said. “The Street reacted early on that there’s going to be a price war; I think it’s less about price war than the value of what we’re offering to people through the product.”
Bertolini added that Schulman will be revealing his plan for turning around the company “sooner rather than later.”
“The board needed to act, and we acted,” Bertolini said.
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