Bill Gates visits Microsoft’s India Development Center in Hyderabad

Billionaire philanthropist and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates visited the tech giant’s India Development Center (IDC) in Hyderabad, the company said.

Gates addressed some of India’s brightest engineering minds at the IDC, Rajiv Kumar, Managing Director, Microsoft IDC, and CVP, Experiences + Devices India said as he shared Gates’ “optimism over the opportunity for an AI-powered India”.

“History comes full circle as philanthropist and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates paid a visit to the Microsoft India Development Center (IDC)…a center of innovation he envisioned in 1998,” the company said in a note capturing Gates’ Tuesday visit.

The development centre is celebrating its 25th year of research, engineering, and development, marking its pivotal role in shaping world-class products such as Azure, Windows, Office, Bing, Copilot, and other AI applications, according to the company.

“It was rewarding to watch Bill address some of India’s brightest engineering minds at IDC, our biggest asset. Echoing his optimism over the opportunity for an AI-powered India, IDC is excited to drive innovation from India for Microsoft – from AI and cloud to security and gaming,” Kumar said.

It may be recalled that Microsoft Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella, during his recent visit to India, had highlighted the country’s unique potential to realise the promise of AI.

This sentiment is particularly relevant with IDC delivering pioneering research and development across various domains, including AI applications, Microsoft said.

Earlier this month, Nadella had said the momentum around developers and development in India is “unbelievable”, as he outlined his vision on AI transformation imperatives in areas such as healthcare and education, and spoke of innovation around Copilot artificial intelligence assistant.

Nadella had also announced expansion of the ‘code without barriers’ initiative to India which he said would help 75,000 women developers by 2024.

“India is a place where momentum around developers, development is unbelievable,” Nadella had said in Bengaluru. PTI