The tech giant Microsoft announced that billionaire philanthropist and Co-founder Bill Gates paid a visit to its India Development Center (IDC) located in Hyderabad. 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's visit. According to the company, the development center is commemorating its 25th anniversary of contributions to research, engineering, and development, underscoring its significant role in crafting top-tier products like Azure, Windows, Office, Bing, Copilot, and various other AI applications.

"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.

Microsoft noted that during his recent visit to India, Satya Nadella, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the company, emphasized the nation's distinct potential to fulfill the possibilities of AI. Microsoft emphasized that this viewpoint is especially pertinent as the IDC continues to lead groundbreaking research and development in diverse domains, including AI applications.

Earlier this month, Nadella expressed his astonishment at the momentum surrounding developers and development in India, emphasizing his vision for AI-driven transformations in crucial sectors like healthcare and education. He also discussed the innovative advancements centered around the Copilot artificial intelligence assistant.

Nadella also revealed plans to extend the 'code without barriers' initiative to India, stating that it aims to support 75,000 women developers by 2024. "India is a place where momentum around developers, development is unbelievable", Nadella had said in Bengaluru. The CEO of Microsoft also discussed enhancing productivity within businesses through Microsoft Copilot, developing transformative AI solutions with Microsoft Azure, and prioritizing AI safety. During this period, Nadella expressed his enthusiasm for witnessing the emergence of new and innovative startups in India.

India is expected to overtake the US as the largest developer community on GitHub by 2027; Nadella stated, "Today as we speak, India is number two only next to the United States in terms of the total number of developers on GitHub and it's going to cross in 2028, I believe, or 2027 it is going to cross… So it's going to be the place where the most number of developers are going to be in." Nadella had said, "It is just awesome to see the human capital of this country really embrace this new platform and effectively lead the new platform shifts".