Google is investing $15 billion to set up a 1 gigawatt data center and AI hub in India, even as the Indian government pushes to reduce dependence on US tech giants.
Google announced Tuesday that it will build a data center in Visakhapatnam, a port city in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh. The investment will be made over the next five years until 2030, the company added. Notably, this is Google’s largest investment in India, five years after it first announced a $10 billion commitment to the country in 2020.
Weeks after President Donald Trump imposed a 50% tariff on Indian imports in August, Prime Minister Narendra Modi began promoting the use of “swadeshi” (Hindi for “Made in India”) products. In response, Indian lawmakers and ministries have begun pushing for local alternatives to Google. These include Chennai-based enterprise technology company Zoho Corporation, which offers competing services to Google Cloud and Gmail, and more recently WhatsApp rival Arattai and Google Maps rival MapMyIndia. Although the initial impact is limited, these moves could pose a real political threat to the future of Google and Microsoft in India.
Google has 14,000 employees in India and has been operating there for 21 years. The company also counts Delhi and Mumbai as official cloud regions.
Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian said the new Google AI hub will be the company’s biggest investment outside the US, adding that it will scale to “several gigawatts” over time.
“This is part of a global network of AI centers in 12 countries,” Kurian said at the launch of the AI hub in New Delhi. “In addition to that, we are also happy to announce that we will make Visakhapatnam a global connectivity hub.”
Google also announced plans to bring undersea cable infrastructure to Visakhapatnam. The US tech giant has partnered with Indian telecom provider Bharti Airtel to build both a data center and a cable landing station in the city. Additionally, Google partnered with Adani Group-backed AdaniConneX to set up the data center infrastructure.
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“We believe this will not only be a landing station for a number of cables but also provide a digital backbone to connect different regions of India,” Kurian said.
Google said the AI hub offers a “full stack solution” including custom Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) that enable local AI processing.
The Mountain View-based company also provides access to AI models, including Gemini, and platforms for building agents and applications. The hub also supports consumer services such as Google Search, YouTube, Gmail, and Google Ads.
“We believe this hub will not only serve India, but also serve Asia and other parts of the world from India,” Kurian said.
It’s no surprise that Google chose Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh. Under Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu, the southern state has previously attracted global technology companies such as Oracle and Microsoft to set up hubs in Hyderabad, which was the capital of Andhra Pradesh before the creation of Telangana. Mr. Naidu was a key political ally who supported Prime Minister Modi’s return to power in the last general election, and has since played a key role in shaping the national policy debate.
“This AI hub will be a very important contribution to (India’s) AI mission objectives in many ways,” said Ashwini Vaishnaw, India’s IT minister.
The minister urged Google to consider India’s Andaman Islands as the next major hub for global internet data transfers, noting that Singapore was “completely suffocated” and assuring the company of the government’s full support. He also proposed linking Visakhapatnam with the Myanmar city of Sittwe to improve connectivity in India’s northeastern state.
