Google CEO Sundar Pichai interacts with students at IIT Kharagpur campus” width=”970″ height=”644″ data-caption=’Google CEO Sundar Pichai interacts with students at IIT, his alma mater, in January 2017 in Kharagpur, India. <span class=”media-credit”>Samir Jana/Hindustan Times via Getty Images</span>’>
Google is deepening its bets on India as it ramps up an unprecedented A.I. spending spree. The company announced today (Oct. 14) that it will invest $15 billion by the end of the decade to establish a data center hub in the city of Visakhapatnam, which represents its largest-ever investment in India.
“It’s an investment that will create high-value jobs in India, while also stimulating economic activity back in the U.S. through related research and development,” said Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, in a blog post. “This is about pioneering a generational shift in A.I. capacity that benefits both economies.”
As Silicon Valley races to capitalize on the A.I. boom, India—with its fast-growing economy, deep tech talent and relatively low costs—has become a top destination for Big Tech investment. Amazon plans to spend $13 billion to build out cloud infrastructure in the country by 2030, while Microsoft announced a $3 billion investment earlier this year to expand its cloud capacity in India by 2027. OpenAI said in August it would open its first India office in New Delhi later this year and is reportedly also eyeing a data center with at least 1 gigawatt of capacity.
Google said the Visakhapatnam hub will be its largest data center campus outside the U.S. The new campus will join Google’s network of data centers spanning a dozen countries and will launch with an initial capacity of 1 gigawatt, according to Lokesh Nara, Minister for Human Resources Development of Andhra Pradesh, the Indian state in which Visakhapatnam is located. “It is a massive leap for our state’s digital future, innovation and global standing,” said Nara in a post on X.
The project comes amid Google’s broader push to expand its global A.I. footprint. Earlier this year, the company unveiled plans to spend $85 billion on A.I.-related initiatives, including infrastructure and talent expansion. Google expects annual capital expenditures to climb even higher in 2026.
The India investment follows a string of major data center announcements by Google. In September, the company announced plans to build a new data center in Hertfordshire, England, as part of a £5 billion ($6.3 billion) investment in the U.K.’s A.I. economy. Earlier this month, the company pledged $5 billion to expand its Belgium data center campuses.
Closer to home, Google announced yesterday (Oct. 13) that it will invest $9 billion to grow its South Carolina data center infrastructure through 2027. The funds will also “deliver programs to protect energy affordability and train the local workforce for careers in the state’s growing tech and energy sector,” said Ruth Porat, Google’s president and chief investment officer, on LinkedIn.
