NEW DELHI: India joined the Pax Silica initiative on Feb. 20 by signing the Pax Silica Declaration and a bilateral addendum titled the Joint Statement on the India-U.S. AI Opportunity Partnership at an event held on the margins of the AI Impact Summit. The documents were signed by S. Krishnan, secretary at India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, U.S. Ambassador to India Sergio Gor and U.S. Under Secretary of State Jacob Helberg. India’s minister Ashwini Vaishnaw and U.S. OSTP Director Michael Kratsios witnessed the signing.
Pax Silica is framed by the signatories as a cooperation effort to build secure, resilient and innovation-driven supply chains for technologies foundational to the artificial intelligence era, with an emphasis on silicon and critical minerals that underpin semiconductors, advanced computing and other high-technology systems. The declaration was originally signed at a Pax Silica summit in Washington on Dec. 12, 2025, by Australia, Japan, South Korea, the United Kingdom, Singapore, Israel and the United States. India’s signature adds it as a participating country to that declaration.
The Joint Statement on the India-U.S. AI Opportunity Partnership sets out a framework for bilateral work across regulation, infrastructure and private-sector activity tied to the AI economy. It lists three focus areas: promoting pro-innovation regulatory approaches, strengthening the “physical AI stack,” and advancing free enterprise. In the statement, the two sides also describe plans to facilitate industry partnerships and investment in next-generation data centers, expand cooperation on access to compute and advanced processors, and accelerate innovation in AI models and applications.
Partnership priorities
On regulation, the joint statement says both sides intend to adopt and mainstream regulatory regimes designed to advance innovation and promote investment, with an emphasis on enabling developers, startups and the platforms supporting them to test, deploy and scale products rapidly while building secure and trusted AI ecosystems. On the physical layer, the statement describes the “physical backbone” of AI as spanning critical minerals, energy, compute and semiconductor manufacturing, and it notes an intention to deepen cooperation under Pax Silica to support supply chains linked to those inputs.
The document also calls out potential joint initiatives, including research and development projects to expand reliable energy infrastructure, increase production of critical minerals, harness skilled workforces and accelerate the development of trusted semiconductor ecosystems. It links those elements to the buildout of AI infrastructure and related technology supply chains. The statement’s structure reflects an effort to connect policy approaches with the underlying materials, manufacturing capacity and computing infrastructure needed for AI development and deployment.
Supply chains and infrastructure
On private-sector engagement, the joint statement says both sides seek to foster an environment in which the AI sector is driven by the creative and financial power of private industry, supported by developer tools and platforms that lower barriers to entry. It also says the two countries aim to facilitate cross-border venture capital flows and research and development partnerships. After the signing, Helberg moderated a fireside chat featuring Krishnan and Gor alongside Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra and Tata Electronics CEO Randhir Thakur.
India’s foreign ministry described technology cooperation as a central pillar of the India-U.S. Comprehensive Global Strategic Partnership and said cooperation under Pax Silica would deepen engagement on critical technologies and supply chain resilience. The Pax Silica Declaration encourages work across multiple parts of the technology supply chain, including software applications and platforms, frontier foundation models, connectivity and network infrastructure, compute and semiconductors, advanced manufacturing, transportation logistics, minerals refining and processing, energy and data centers.
India’s addition to Pax Silica and the signing of the bilateral AI opportunity statement were positioned by both governments as steps to strengthen collaboration in critical and emerging technologies linked to AI and semiconductors, anchored in supply chain security and resilience. The agreements were signed in New Delhi on Feb. 20 at the summit’s sidelines and were presented as covering both policy alignment and practical areas such as data centers, compute, processors, minerals and semiconductor ecosystems. – By Content Syndication Services.