Alphabet Inc.’s Google is planning to invest more than $10 billion in southern India to build a massive 1-gigawatt data center, one of its largest global infrastructure commitments and a major step in its expansion across Asia’s fastest-growing digital market.
According to Bloomberg News, the new facility will be located in the port city of Visakhapatnam and is expected to be completed within two years. The project is part of a broader initiative by the state of Andhra Pradesh to develop 6 gigawatts of data center capacity by 2029, Nara Lokesh, the region’s technology minister, said in an interview with Bloomberg. Lokesh, who is also the son of Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Nara Chandrababu Naidu, described the investment as transformative for the local economy. “It’s not just about the jobs,” he said. “It’s about the larger ripple effect that it creates, the economic activity it creates.”
India has rapidly emerged as a global data center hotspot, driven by soaring demand for artificial intelligence infrastructure and cloud computing services. Amazon.com Inc. has announced plans to invest $12.7 billion to expand its cloud operations in India by 2030, while OpenAI — the developer of ChatGPT — is also seeking to establish a 1-gigawatt data center in the region. Market research firm CBRE Group Inc. estimates that total investments in India’s data center sector will exceed $100 billion by 2027.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has repeatedly highlighted the importance of advanced technology and digital infrastructure as pillars of India’s economic transformation. However, Bloomberg notes that the country still faces significant hurdles in meeting its ambitions, including limited water resources and frequent power disruptions that threaten to constrain industrial growth.
Andhra Pradesh, led by the Telugu Desam Party under Chief Minister Naidu, has become central to Modi’s broader economic agenda. The state offers subsidized land and power to attract major investors, echoing Naidu’s efforts in the late 1990s to transform Hyderabad into a global technology hub that now houses major campuses for Microsoft Corp. and Oracle Corp. Lokesh said the regional government is ready to work closely with New Delhi to secure favorable federal policies for investors, describing the collaborative strategy as “a double engine, a bullet train.”
With Google’s multibillion-dollar investment, India’s southern coast is poised to become a cornerstone of the country’s digital future — and a key node in the global AI-driven data economy.
