Google has broken ground on its largest artificial‑intelligence (AI) hub outside the United States with a ceremony in Visakhapatnam, India, on Tuesday. The project, announced in October 2025, entails a US$15 billion investment over five years to build a gigawatt‑scale data‑centre campus and related infrastructure in the southeastern port city of Andhra Pradesh.
Bikash Koley, Google’s Vice President for Global Infrastructure, said the ceremony marks the first concrete milestone of the company’s “largest commitment to India’s digital future.” He described the initiative as a “full‑stack AI ecosystem” that will host the computational power required for services such as Gemini and Google Search. The data‑centre will be purpose‑built to meet the intense processing demands of modern AI workloads.
Andhra Pradesh’s Information Technology Minister Nara Lokesh expressed enthusiasm for the development, calling it India’s “most coveted AI and deep‑tech hub.” He highlighted the strategic importance of the site, which is being positioned as a landing point for submarine fiber‑optic cables that will connect India to Singapore and diversify the country’s international connectivity options. Currently, India’s subsea cable landings are concentrated in Mumbai and Chennai; adding Vizag will increase the resilience of the nation’s digital backbone and strengthen economic security.
The Vizag project aligns with global trends in data‑centre expansion, driven by the exponential growth of digital data and the energy‑intensive nature of AI training and inference. Industry analysts note that such facilities are critical to supporting the surge in cloud services, machine‑learning research, and real‑time AI applications.
Google’s investment is expected to generate significant economic activity in the region, creating construction jobs in the short term and technology‑related employment in the longer term. The company plans to develop ancillary infrastructure, including high‑capacity power supply and advanced cooling systems, to sustain the megawatt‑level operations.
Koley emphasized that the initiative represents a pivotal moment for Google, India, and the city of Visakhapatnam. “By establishing Vizag as an international subsea gateway, we will add vital diversity from the existing landings, increasing the resilience of India’s digital backbone and improving economic security,” he said.
The ground‑breaking ceremony concludes a series of agreements between Google and Indian authorities aimed at expanding the nation’s AI capabilities and digital infrastructure. The next phase will involve detailed engineering design, procurement of hardware, and construction of the data‑centre campus, with completion targeted for 2029.
The development underscores the growing strategic importance of India in the global AI ecosystem and signals heightened competition among technology firms to secure data‑centre capacity in emerging markets.
