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Google is set to establish a data centre in Andhra Pradesh’s Visakhapatnam with an investment of Rs 87,520 crore (USD 10 billion). Google Cloud’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Thomas Kurian said the tech giant plans to invest up to USD 15 billion in the region over the next five years.
AdaniConneX — a joint venture between the Adani Group and EdgeConneX — announced that it has partnered with Google to develop India’s largest AI data centre hub in Vizag. Comprising gigawatt-scale data centre operations along with a subsea cable network to drive AI workloads in India, the project will be carried out with partners including AdaniConneX and Airtel, said a company statement.
A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed between the Andhra Pradesh Information Technology Department and Google in New Delhi on Tuesday, October 14, for the establishment of a 1-gigawatt hyperscale data centre campus in Visakhapatnam. Google will deploy its full Artificial Intelligence stack at the facility.
The meeting and MoU signing were attended by Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, IT Minister Nara Lokesh, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, and Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw.
According to an official statement, the new AI hub in Visakhapatnam will combine AI infrastructure, data centre capacity, new large-scale energy sources, and an expanded fibre-optic network. This is touted to be one of the largest such projects for Google in Asia.
Thomas Kurian said the Visakhapatnam data centre will be connected to 12 countries including Singapore, Malaysia and Australia via subsea cable. “This is the first time that Google has made such a large investment outside the US. Along with Gemini AI, other services provided by Google will also be available through this data center… There is an opportunity to invest USD 15 billion in the next five years,” he said.
CM Naidu said that following Google’s investment, Prime Minister Narendra Modi was considering organising a Global AI Conference in the city in February next year. “We will try to bring AI closer to every family,” Naidu said.
Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said that since many government services were being provided digitally in Andhra Pradesh, it was the right location for the data centre.
Naidu and IT Minister Nara Lokesh thanked the Union government for its cooperation in facilitating the project. “The state government is providing better services to the people with systems like real-time governance. We want companies like Google to provide more cooperation for this,” Lokesh said.