India, May 20 -- India's AI boom may be quietly creating its next major dollar outflow problem.

As startups and enterprises rush to embed generative AI and large language models into everything from customer support to internal workflows, a growing share of their technology spending is flowing overseas through AI inference bills.

AI inference refers to the process of using trained AI models to generate responses and execute tasks in real-world applications. Unlike traditional software, AI-native applications incur a fresh compute cost every time a user interacts with them through a chatbot query, as well as each instance of personalisation in recommendation engines or workflow automation powered by AI models. These costs are typically m...