Google to invest record USD 15 bn in India to accelerate AI services

New Delhi: Google plans to invest USD 15 billion over the next five years in setting an artificial intelligence hub in Visakhapatnam, a senior official of the company said on Tuesday.

In a post on X, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said, “Great to speak with India’s Prime Minister @narendramodi and @OfficialINDIAai to share our plans for the first-ever Google AI hub in Visakhapatnam — a landmark development."

"This hub brings together gigawatt-scale compute capacity, a new international subsea gateway, and large-scale energy infrastructure. Through it, we aim to deliver our industry-leading technology to enterprises and users in India, accelerating AI innovation and driving growth across the country,” he added further.

While speaking at a company event, Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian said that the new AI hub will combine AI infrastructure, new data centre capacity, large energy scale sources and expanded optical fibre network.

"We plan to invest USD 15 billion over the next five years in setting up an AI hub in Visakhapatnam," Kurian said.

Accelerating AI Transformation

The Google AI hub in Visakhapatnam will include a purpose-built data centre campus, adding gigawatt-scale compute capacity to help meet demand for digital services across India and around the world. Developed with leading partners, AdaniConneX and Airtel, it will be built with the same cutting-edge infrastructure that powers Google products like Search, Workspace, and YouTube.

The AI hub will also deliver the high-performance and low-latency services that businesses and organisations need to build and scale their own AI-powered solutions, accelerate research and development, and ultimately help India secure its place as a global leader in the AI-driven future.

When operational, the new data centre campus will join Google’s network of existing AI data centres that spans 12 countries. It will benefit from technology developed by Google’s R&D centres in Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Pune, including the design and development of crucial software and hardware innovations.