The proposal has no restriction for 18 key allies of the US, which have been clubbed under Group 1, but there are restrictions on the quantum that can be exported to other countries under Group 2, including India.
“In the short term, the new export controls may not significantly impact India. However, the uncertainty of securing licenses and trade negotiations could challenge India’s ambitions for large-scale AI hardware deployment,” India Electronics and Semiconductor Association (IESA) President Ashok Chandak said in a statement.
The proposal restricts export to less than 1,700 GPUs per company per year in Group 2 countries.
“Large-scale AI data centres, requiring several hundred thousand GPUs, may be delayed or scaled-down, putting global companies at a competitive advantage over Indian enterprises. However, small-scale setups could still enable experimentation, innovation, and restricted model development,” Chandak said.
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India could potentially secure General National Validated End User (NVEU) authorisations due to its status as neither a re-exporter of Compute ICs (integrated circuits) nor an advanced compute manufacturing hub, he added. “This distinction, combined with the presence of significant Indian design centres for GPU makers like NVIDIA and AMD and their management commitment of support to India, could position India favourably for license approvals,” Chandak said.
US-based providers like Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, etc. are expected to receive global authorisations but will be limited to deploying only 50 per cent of their AI computing power outside the US under the proposed framework.
Chandak said the export controls are set to take effect in 120 days, allowing the incoming administration under President-elect Donald Trump to potentially amend these rules.
“Thus, it is a bit uncertain whether the Trump administration will make it easy or pass the rule as is. Amid growing concerns from technology industries, the global AI landscape may witness a shift, impacting both US technological leadership and India’s growth trajectory in AI infrastructure.
“Though, in the short term, India may not have a major impact, but in the long run, scaling up by any Indian conglomerate could face the hurdles of quantity cap,” he said.
ARTPARK Co-founder and AI Foundry Chairman Umakant Soni, however, said India stands to benefit greatly from the geopolitical realignment driven by these restrictions, as countries and corporations like Apple and Samsung look to diversify their supply chains away from China.
“India already has a strong base in chip design and engineering talent (companies like Intel, NVIDIA, and Qualcomm have R&D centres in India). The restrictions could also boost India’s chip design and research ecosystem. However, India will need to ramp up investments in training its workforce in semiconductor manufacturing and design to fully capitalise on the opportunity,” Soni said.
The proposed framework completely bars exports of AI Chips to countries in group 3 comprising China, Russia, Iran, Iraq, Cambodia, Belarus etc.
