Tech giant Google is making its largest-ever commitment to India, announcing a $15 billion investment to build an Artificial Intelligence (AI) infrastructure hub in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, over the next five years.
“It’s the largest AI hub that we are going to be investing in anywhere in the world outside of the US,” Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian said at a New Delhi event, according to a Reuters report. Additionally, in a big announcement, Google Cloud plans to land a subsea cable in Vizag, which will play a crucial role in building Vizag as a destination of data centers.
As of now, subsea cables are typically landed in just two locations, Chennai and Mumbai, in India. Google’s plan to land a subsea cable in Vizag will play a crucial role in developing the city as a data center hub and a key contributor to India’s digital economy.
The announcement comes at a time when several technology companies are investing heavily in building data centers and cloud infrastructure to address the growing AI workloads across all regions. Apart from Google, Amazon Web Services (AWS), OpenAI and Microsoft are also investing heavily in developing the infrastructure required for the AI era. OpenAI is planning a major data center in India as part of the Stargate initiative.
This is mainly because AI requires more computing power, pushing the demand for data centers. Google has invested around $85 billion this year to develop data center capacity.
Andhra Pradesh’s IT Minister Nara Lokesh posted on X, “It is a massive leap for our state’s digital future, innovation and global standing. This is just the beginning.”
“It is a very auspicious and happy day for me and all of us. First of all, I have to thank our honorable Prime Minister, he has made it possible. Our that our finance minister (Nirmala Sitharaman), she has done very well and our IT Minister, Ashwini Vaishnaw, when I mooted the idea, he was very positive…Google has come to India and also (state) IT Minister Nara Lokesh…he has worked with you. I am a great admirer of Google. Your creativity and speed are very important. I brought Microsoft to Hyderabad, today, Google has come to Visakhapatnam, we are very happy. According to me, we are in inspiring time,” said Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu.
