In a landmark move, Google announced plans to invest $15 billion over the next five years to build a state-of-the-art artificial intelligence (AI) data centre campus in Andhra Pradesh’s port city of Visakhapatnam, marking the U.S. tech giant’s largest-ever investment in India.
The announcement was made at a New Delhi event attended by Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian, along with India’s IT and Finance Ministers. The facility will serve as Google’s largest AI hub outside the United States, and is being seen as a major boost to India’s rapidly expanding digital economy.
“Our long-term vision is to accelerate India’s own AI mission,” Kurian said.
“This centre will anchor India’s AI infrastructure and talent ecosystem for decades to come.”
A Strategic AI Push
The upcoming data centre with an initial capacity of 1 gigawatt will be developed over 500 acres in Visakhapatnam, offering world-class computing infrastructure designed for AI model training, data storage, and cloud services.
Google’s move aligns with its broader global strategy to expand AI infrastructure amid surging demand for generative AI tools and large language models. The company has earmarked $85 billion globally this year to scale its data centre operations.
Partnerships and Local Collaboration
The project will be developed in collaboration with Adani Group and Bharti Airtel, which will help build the physical and network infrastructure, including a new international subsea gateway to support global data connectivity.
Earlier estimates by Andhra Pradesh officials placed the investment at $10 billion, but the figure has now risen to $15 billion as part of an expanded blueprint expected to generate over 188,000 direct and indirect jobs across construction, engineering, and IT services.
🇮🇳 Economic and Political Context
The investment comes at a delicate time in U.S.–India trade relations, strained by Washington’s 50% tariffs on imported Indian goods and calls by sections of India’s leadership to boycott foreign products.
Despite the tensions, Google’s announcement is being seen as a vote of confidence in India’s digital and regulatory environment.
“This initiative creates substantial economic and societal opportunities for both India and the United States,” Google said in a statement, without directly referencing the tariff dispute.
Indian officials, according to Reuters, have been holding private meetings with U.S. multinationals to assure them of a stable and investment-friendly business climate despite ongoing trade frictions.
India’s Data Centre Race
With nearly 1 billion internet users, India has emerged as one of the world’s fastest-growing digital markets. Tech giants such as Microsoft and Amazon Web Services (AWS) have already invested billions in building cloud infrastructure in the country.
Indian industrial heavyweights Mukesh Ambani (Reliance Industries) and Gautam Adani (Adani Group) are also ramping up data centre investments to cater to the exponential rise in AI-driven services, fintech, and content streaming.
The new Google AI Data Campus is expected to significantly enhance India’s digital processing capacity, enabling faster deployment of AI applications in education, healthcare, agriculture, and governance.
Regulatory Challenges
While Google counts India as one of its most valuable growth markets where YouTube dominates video streaming and Android powers almost every smartphone the company continues to face antitrust scrutiny and legal challenges over data and content policies.
Most recently, a Bollywood couple filed a lawsuit against YouTube’s AI tools for allegedly manipulating their content using deepfake technology, reflecting the rising tension between innovation and ethics in India’s AI landscape.
Google’s $15-billion AI centre signals India’s arrival as a global AI powerhouse a pivotal player in data, cloud, and digital transformation. But for this momentum to sustain, India must strike a balance between open innovation and strong regulation, ensuring that the world’s biggest data hub doesn’t become its most vulnerable one.
