Google announced on Tuesday in an event in New Delhi that it will invest $15 billion over the next five years to establish a major AI data centre hub in Andhra Pradesh.
The 1-gigawatt facility will be located in the port city of Visakhapatnam and is described by Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian as the largest AI hub the company is investing in outside the US.
Earlier state officials had estimated the investment at $10 billion.
The project comes amid rising competition among global tech giants to expand AI infrastructure. Google alone is expected to spend roughly $85 billion this year on building out data centre capacity to meet soaring demand for AI services, which require massive computing power and specialised facilities to link thousands of chips in clusters.
Microsoft and Amazon have already made substantial investments in Indian data centres, tapping into a market with nearly a billion internet users. Amazon intends to spend $12.7 billion developing cloud infrastructure in South Asia by 2030, while OpenAI is planning a 1-gigawatt data centre in the region.
Google’s new facility will be the largest in both capacity and investment in Asia, and forms part of a broader multi-billion-dollar expansion of the company’s data centre network across the region, including Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand.
The project is being developed in partnership with AdaniConneX and Airtel, and will leverage the same advanced infrastructure that powers Google products such as Search, Workspace, and YouTube.
The hub is expected to provide high-performance, low-latency services to businesses and organisations, enabling them to build and scale AI-powered solutions, accelerate research and development, and support India’s ambitions to become a global leader in AI technology.
“This facility will house the TPU and GPU-based compute power required for deep learning, neural network training, and large-scale AI model inference and create an ecosystem that accelerates AI-driven solutions for India’s most critical sectors - from healthcare and agriculture to logistics and finance,” said founder and chairman of Adani Group, Gautam Adani, in a post on X.
Once operational, the Visakhapatnam campus will join Google’s network of AI data centres spanning 12 countries. It will also draw on innovations from Google’s R&D centres in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Pune, including critical software and hardware developments.
As part of its AI hub investment in Visakhapatnam, Google will construct a new international subsea gateway, including multiple subsea cables landing on India’s eastern coast. The initiative will connect to Google’s over two million miles of existing terrestrial and subsea infrastructure, positioning Visakhapatnam as a key hub for AI and global connectivity.
The will be developed in partnership with Airtel, which will co-establish the purpose-built data centre and a state-of-the-art Cable Landing Station (CLS) to host Google’s new subsea cables. Airtel will also deploy a robust intra-city and inter-city fibre network, further strengthening India’s connectivity infrastructure and enabling broader access to AI-powered services nationwide.
The gateway is expected to address India’s growing digital demand, provide route diversity alongside existing subsea cable landings in Mumbai and Chennai, and create high-capacity, low-latency pathways for faster experiences for Google users and customers. The network will also enhance the resilience and capacity of India’s digital backbone and promote digital inclusivity and transformation across the country.
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