L&T Semiconductor's thrust is to develop customised chips for Sovereign AI stack: CEO Sandeep Kumar

New Delhi [India], February 19 (ANI): L&T Semiconductor has identified power semiconductors as a major priority, given their critical role in energy infrastructure, industrial systems, and electric vehicles according to the company's Chief Executive Officer Sandeep Kumar.
"Power devices are the backbone of energy grids and EV systems. We are moving very fast in this area," he said in a conversation with ANI.

The company is working closely with the government in grid-related deployments.
Positioning L&T Semiconductor as a product-focused company, Kumar said the firm is not merely building manufacturing facilities but developing its own semiconductor products to be produced in those factories.
Another major thrust area is custom AI and data centre chips. Kumar noted that global technology giants increasingly design custom chips tailored to their specific workloads, as generic processors may not always offer optimal efficiency.
Similarly, in India, sectors such as defence, finance, and agriculture will require customized semiconductor solutions. Generic data centre systems often consume more power and take longer for training and inference tasks, making vertical-specific chips more efficient.
L&T Semiconductor CEO said they were also developing solutions in mobility and communication. With electric vehicle adoption rising and wireless data traffic expanding, Kumar said these segments represent significant growth opportunities. The company is building wireless modules and other communication-related semiconductor products to address these demands, he added.
He also suggested that India must significantly accelerate its efforts in semiconductor design and product development to build a sovereign technology ecosystem. He emphasised that while recent government initiatives mark a strong beginning, the country needs to scale up to compete at the global level.
Kumar highlighted a stark imbalance in India's position within the global digital economy.
"Twenty per cent of the world's data comes from India, but only 2 per cent of global data storage is located here. The monetisation from that data is just 0.2 per cent," he said. "This means global companies are benefiting from Indian data."
He described the ongoing AI India Impact Summit and related policy measures as critical steps toward strengthening India's domestic ecosystem and attracting international companies to establish and grow operations within the country.
However, Kumar stressed that infrastructure alone is insufficient. "We need a sovereign stack. Our chips should be made here, our cards should be made here, and our servers should be made here," he said, underlining the importance of domestic capability across the semiconductor value chain.
He also warned of emerging cybersecurity challenges posed by artificial intelligence and quantum computing.
"AI makes hacking easier and faster. With quantum computing on the horizon, the computational power to break current systems will increase dramatically," he said. Developing domestic and sovereign systems would help reduce vulnerabilities to external data breaches and cyber threats, he added. (ANI)