America’s AI gold rush is staring at a haunting challenge as most U.S. companies struggle to see real-world benefits.
India’s $300 billion IT industry is moving to capture the “deployment layer” to execute the messy, unglamorous work needed to make artificial intelligence actually profitable.
After decades of running technology systems for global banks, retailers, airlines, and hospitals, Indian IT companies including Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, Wipro, and Tech Mahindra are banking on their strong client relationships and enterprise experience to implement AI at scale. If they succeed, it will reshape who captures the biggest profits from the AI boom.
An August 2025 MIT Media Lab report said 95% of generative AI pilots at companies fail because of flawed integration and a “learning gap” between available tools and the teams implementing them. Even as 90% of executives experiment with AI, 60% say the data and technologies at their companies are not ready, according to a 2026 Bain survey.
“The IT industry’s real value is the context and understanding of every enterprise’s business and technology landscape, and making the right technology work inside the processes,” N. Chandrasekaran, chairperson of the Tata Group, which owns TCS, said at the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi in February. “AI will expand that role much further.”
