Google to speculate $15B in Indian AI infrastructure hub | TechCrunch

Google is making a $15 billion funding to arrange a 1-gigawatt knowledge heart and AI hub in India, even because the Indian authorities pushes for decreased reliance on U.S. tech giants.

On Tuesday, Google mentioned it could construct the info heart within the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, within the port metropolis of Visakhapatnam. The funding will happen over the following 5 years by 2030, the corporate added. Notably, this marks Google’s largest funding in India and comes 5 years after it first introduced a $10 billion dedication to the South Asian nation in 2020.

Weeks after President Donald Trump imposed a 50% tariff on Indian imports in August, Prime Minister Narendra Modi started urging using “swadeshi” (Hindi for “made in India”) merchandise. In response, Indian lawmakers and ministries began selling native options to Google — together with these from Chennai-based enterprise tech agency Zoho Company, which affords opponents to Google Cloud and Gmail, and most lately, WhatsApp-rival Arattai, in addition to MapMyIndia, a Google Maps-rival. Whereas the preliminary impression has been restricted, these strikes might pose an actual political menace to the way forward for corporations Google and Microsoft in India.

Google has 14,000 workers in India, and has operated within the nation for 21 years. The corporate additionally counts Delhi and Mumbai as official cloud areas.

The brand new Google AI hub would be the firm’s largest funding outdoors of the U.S., mentioned Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian, including that it could be scaled to “multiple gigawatts” over time.

“It is part of a global network of AI centers in 12 different countries,” Kurian mentioned on the launch of the AI hub in New Delhi. “In addition to that, we’re also pleased to announce that we will be making Vishakhapatnam a global connectivity hub.”

Google additionally introduced plans to carry its subsea cable infrastructure to Visakhapatnam. The U.S. tech large has partnered with Indian telecom supplier Bharti Airtel to construct each the info heart and the cable touchdown station within the metropolis. Additional, Google has teamed up with Adani Group-backed AdaniConneX to arrange the infrastructure for the info heart.

“We see it not just becoming a landing station for a large number of cables, but also providing a digital backbone connecting different parts of India together,” Kurian mentioned.

Google mentioned the AI hub will provide a “full stack of solutions,” together with its customized Tensor Processing Items (TPUs) to allow native AI processing.

The Mountain View–based mostly firm may even present entry to its AI fashions — together with Gemini — and its platform for constructing brokers and purposes. The hub will moreover help client providers resembling Google Search, YouTube, Gmail, and Google Adverts.

“We see this hub not just serving India but from India serving Asia and other parts of the world,” Kurian mentioned.

Google’s selection of Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh isn’t a surprise. The southern state, underneath Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu, has beforehand attracted world tech companies like Oracle and Microsoft to arrange hubs in Hyderabad, which was Andhra Pradesh’s capital earlier than the creation of Telangana. Naidu, a key political ally who supported Prime Minister Modi’s return to energy within the final basic election, has since performed a outstanding function in shaping nationwide coverage discussions.

“This AI hub will be a very important contribution to the [India] AI mission goals in different ways,” mentioned Indian IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw.

The minister urged Google to contemplate India’s Andaman Islands as the following main hub for world web knowledge switch, noting that Singapore “is all choked,” and guaranteed the corporate of full authorities help. He additionally proposed linking Visakhapatnam with Sittwe, a metropolis in Myanmar, to enhance connectivity in India’s northeastern states.