To overcome local opposition, tech giants should use their massive balance sheets to provide tangible economic benefits to host communities. Subsidizing local electricity bills or funding renewable energy projects can turn residents into supporters, clearing the path for essential AI infrastructure development.

The "Genesis Mission" aims to use national labs' data and supercomputers for AI-driven science. This initiative marks a potential strategic shift away from the prevailing tech belief that breakthroughs like AGI will emerge exclusively from private corporations, reasserting a key role for government-led R&D in fundamental innovation.

Instead of bearing the full cost and risk of building new AI data centers, large cloud providers like Microsoft use CoreWeave for 'overflow' compute. This allows them to meet surges in customer demand without committing capital to assets that depreciate quickly and may become competitors' infrastructure in the long run.

Instead of competing to build sovereign AI stacks from the chip up, India's strategic edge is in applying commoditized AI models to its unique, population-scale problems. This leverages the country's deep experience with real-world, large-scale implementation.

OpenAI is lobbying the federal government to co-invest in its Stargate initiative, offering dedicated compute for public research. This positions OpenAI not just as a private company but as a key partner for national security and scientific advancement, following the big tech playbook of seeking large, foundational government contracts.

India's Ministry of Electronics and IT (Meti) acts as a promoter and facilitator for the AI sector, not a traditional regulator. It uses "policy nudges" and strategic programs like the India AI Mission to coordinate and foster collaboration between private companies, academia, and research organizations.

For India, "leapfrogging" with AI means overcoming systemic resource shortages. AI acts as a horizontal productivity multiplier, enabling, for example, a limited number of doctors to deliver better healthcare outcomes through AI-powered diagnostics, thus enhancing sectoral capacity without massive infrastructure investment.

SoftBank selling its NVIDIA stake to fund OpenAI's data centers shows that the cost of AI infrastructure exceeds any single funding source. To pay for it, companies are creating a "Barbenheimer" mix of financing: selling public stock, raising private venture capital, securing government backing, and issuing long-term corporate debt.

The massive capital expenditure on AI infrastructure is not just a private sector trend; it's framed as an existential national security race against China's superior electricity generation capacity. This government backing makes it difficult to bet against and suggests the spending cycle is still in its early stages.