Key points
- Visakhapatnam to host major data centre
- Project expected to create 188,000 jobs
- Part of global AI network in 12 countries
BENGALURU: Google will invest $15 billion over the next five years to establish an artificial intelligence (AI) data centre in India’s southern state of Andhra Pradesh, marking its largest-ever investment in the world’s most populous country, a company official announced on Tuesday.
The tech giant has pledged around $85 billion globally this year to expand its data centre capacity, as major technology firms race to build infrastructure to meet surging demand for AI-powered services, reports Reuters.
“It’s the largest AI hub that we are going to be investing in anywhere in the world outside of the United States,” Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian said at an event in New Delhi, adding that the investment would be made over the next five years.
“It is a part of a global network of AI centres in 12 different countries,” he added.
The data centre campus, located in the port city of Visakhapatnam, will initially have a capacity of 1 gigawatt but will eventually be scaled up to “multiple gigawatts,” according to Kurian.
Creating jobs
Earlier estimates from state officials had put the investment at $10 billion. The Andhra Pradesh government has said the project is expected to create around 188,000 jobs.
Rival tech giants Microsoft and Amazon have already invested billions in building data centres across India — a crucial growth market where nearly a billion people are now online. Indian industrial magnates Gautam Adani and Mukesh Ambani have also announced large-scale investments in expanding data centre infrastructure.
AI technologies demand vast computing resources, driving up the need for specialised facilities that connect thousands of high-performance chips in clusters.
Google’s parent company, Alphabet Inc., views India as a key growth market, with YouTube boasting the largest user base in the country and Android smartphones dominating usage.
However, the US tech giant continues to face multiple antitrust challenges in India over its business practices, along with a lawsuit filed by a Bollywood couple contesting YouTube’s AI policy.
