Outlook Business Desk
Google will invest $6 billion to set up a 1-gigawatt data centre in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh. This is Alphabet’s largest data centre investment in Asia and its first such project in India, signalling a major digital push.
The data centre project includes $2 billion for renewable energy, which will power the facility. This clean energy investment is part of Google’s broader sustainability goals, according to Andhra Pradesh government sources familiar with the plan, Reuters reported.
Google’s Visakhapatnam data centre will be the largest in Asia by both capacity and investment. It’s part of a multi-billion-dollar expansion by Google across the region, including new data centre projects in Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand.
In April, Alphabet confirmed its commitment to invest around $75 billion this year to expand global data centre capacity, even as economic uncertainty persists due to trade tensions linked to US President Donald Trump’s global tariff policies.
The Andhra Pradesh government has been seeking investments to ease pressure from high state-level debt and social spending.
Andhra Pradesh IT Minister Nara Lokesh, who is in Singapore to discuss investment and business opportunities with the nation-state, said Andhra Pradesh has secured 1.6 GW in data centre deals and targets 6 GW in five years. The initial 1.6 GW, expected in 24 months, will exceed India’s current total capacity of 1.4 GW.
"We're also working on getting three cable landing stations in Visakhapatnam. We want to create enough of cable network, which will be two times what Mumbai has today," Lokesh said. These stations handle data from global undersea cables.
Lokesh also said Andhra Pradesh is working to strengthen its energy infrastructure to meet the sustainability needs of data centres. He expects the power demand from this electricity-heavy sector to reach up to 10 gigawatts over the next five years.
"Majority will end up being actually green energy, and that's the unique value proposition that we bring to the table," he said. Some of the additional capacity will be coal-fired, however, as data centres require reliable, high volume power throughout the day.