India has emerged as one of the world’s leading artificial intelligence ecosystems, ranking third globally in the 2025 Global AI Vibrancy Index, according to the 2025 release of the Global AI Vibrancy Tool by the Institute for Human-Centred AI (HAI), Stanford University. With a score of 21.59, India recorded one of the greatest year-on-year improvements, climbing from seventh position in 2024 to third in 2025.
Developed by Stanford University’s Institute for Human-Centred AI, the Global AI Vibrancy Tool evaluates national AI ecosystems across multiple dimensions, including research and development, talent, economy, infrastructure, policy and governance, responsible AI, and public opinion. The latest edition extends data coverage from 2017 through 2025, offering a comprehensive, longitudinal view of global AI progress.
India’s rise reflects sustained momentum across core AI drivers. The country has strengthened its position through a rapidly expanding AI talent pool, increased industry adoption, growing research output, and renewed government focus on AI as a strategic national priority. In the 2025 rankings, India trails only the United States, which continues to lead by a wide margin, and China, which ranks second due to its dominance in AI publications, patents, and citations.
The 2025 edition introduces a refined framework, consolidating education, workforce, and diversity-related indicators into a single Talent pillar, a change that aligns closely with India’s growing strengths in skills development, AI hiring, and workforce capacity. The updated ranking methodology also streamlines the number of indicators used for scoring from 42 to 23 highly comparable indicators across seven pillars, improving clarity while preserving analytical depth.
Despite the clear leadership of the United States and China, the Stanford HAI analysis highlights that competition among the remaining countries is tight. Small score differences separate much of the top 20, indicating that targeted policy action and sustained investment can quickly shift national rankings. India’s leap into the top three underscores how coordinated ecosystem development can translate into rapid global advancement.
The Global AI Vibrancy Tool, hosted by Stanford HAI, allows users to explore India’s performance across years, indicators, and pillars, customise weightings based on policy priorities, and benchmark progress against global peers—offering policymakers, researchers, and industry leaders a data-driven lens into India’s growing role in the global AI landscape.
