Google’s $15-Billion Data Centre Investment in India

Syllabus: GS3/ Science & Technology

Context

• Google has announced a historic investment of USD 15 billion (₹87,520 crore) to build its largest-ever AI hub in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh.
  • This gigawatt-scale project, planned over five years (2026–2030), aligns with India’s Viksit Bharat Vision and supports the goals of the India AI Mission.

Key Features of the Google AI Hub

• Purpose-built Data Centre Campus: The hub will integrate advanced AI infrastructure, large-scale data centre capacity, renewable energy sources, and a high-speed fibre-optic network, all located in one campus.
• International Subsea Gateway: Construction of new international subsea cables landing at Visakhapatnam on India’s eastern coast, enhancing global digital connectivity and internet speed.

AI-Powered Data Centres in India

• Data centres are specialized facilities that house computing infrastructure — servers, storage systems, and networking equipment — to store, process, and manage digital data.
  • They are the backbone of cloud computing, AI, e-Governance, and digital services.
• AI-Powered Data Centres require high-performance computing (HPC) with GPU clusters; low-latency data access for real-time decision-making, and massive parallel processing to train large language models (LLMs) and generative AI systems.
• India’s data centre market is projected to attract $100 billion in investments by 2027, growing at a CAGR of 24.68%, driven by AI adoption and digital transformation.

Strategic and Economic Impact

• This would position Visakhapatnam as a global technology and AI powerhouse, supporting India’s surge in digital infrastructure and AI capabilities.
• The hub will enhance India’s capacity for next-generation AI applications, cloud computing, and data-intensive services, forming a critical node in Google’s worldwide AI infrastructure network that spans 12 countries.

Government Push and Policy Support – IndiaAI Mission (2024): It aims to establish public AI compute infrastructure with 10,000+ GPUs; develop indigenous foundational models; and fund AI startups from idea to commercialization. 1. The government aims to set up 500 data labs under the IndiaAI Mission to support AI research and model development. – National Informatics Centre (NIC): It has established state-of-the-art National Data Centres in Delhi, Pune, Hyderabad, and Bhubaneswar, along with 37 smaller centres across state capitals. These centres support: 1. E-Governance platforms; 2. Digital services for ministries and departments; 3. Secure hosting for government applications; – National Program on Artificial Intelligence (MeitY): It promotes AI ethics and governance; skilling and research; and creation of a National Centre for AI.

Source: LM