IBM CEO: India is competitive in AI, strong in deployment
- ByStartupStory | February 26, 2026
IBM CEO Arvind Krishna said that India is not behind in AI and has an advantage in deployment, as it services many multinational companies.
During his visit to India, Krishna met Prime Minister Narendra Modi and discussed upskilling the country’s IT workforce.
He emphasized that AI will enhance productivity and highlighted IBM’s US$4.5 billion in internal gains from AI-driven efficiencies.
Krishna also addressed legacy systems, noting that mainframes remain critical for high-volume workloads like banking transactions.
He said AI tools can modernize codebases beyond COBOL and predicted that AI will augment many IT services, with about half of current tasks potentially handled by AI agents.
Krishna acknowledged potential job displacement but believes AI will create new opportunities, especially in transforming business models.
He urged India to focus on AI deployment and skill development rather than trying to build numerous models, leveraging its strong back-end and IT services sector.
🔗 Source: The Economic Times
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