Bharti Airtel, one of India’s largest telecommunications companies, has announced an investment of US$ 1 billion into Nxtra, Airtel’s data center business, to expand its AI data center footprint across India. The investment was led by Alpha Wave Global, Carlyle, and Anchorage Capital, through their affiliates.
In a press release, Airtel revealed that as part of the pact, Alpha Wave Global will invest US$435 million, Carlyle US$240 million, Anchorage Capital US$35 million, with the rest being infused by Airtel. The investors’ final shareholding will be subject to finalized post-closing adjustments. Airtel will continue to retain a controlling stake in Nxtra. The deal is subject to regulatory approvals in India.
“At Nxtra, we have built one of India’s most advanced and sustainable data center networks, designed to meet the evolving needs of enterprises, hyperscalers, and government. With ~300 MW capacity today, we aim to scale to 1 GW in the next few years, targeting ~25% market share,” Gopal Vittal, Executive Vice Chairman, Airtel, said.
“We have built a strong partnership with Airtel and continue to believe Nxtra is well-positioned to benefit from India’s long-term digital infrastructure tailwinds. The company has made significant progress in expanding its capabilities, strengthening customer relationships and building a scalable platform, and we look forward to further working with Airtel and Nxtra’s management team to build the company into one of the largest datacenter players in India,” said Kapil Modi, Partner at Carlyle India Advisors.
Rick Gerson, Co-Founder & CIO, Alpha Wave Global, said, “Alpha Wave has a particular focus on identifying and backing AI-first businesses including Anthropic, OpenAI, Cerebras, SpaceX, xAI, Ramp, Cognition and Long Lake Management. We are excited to partner with Mr. Sunil Mittal and the Bharti Group — a franchise defined by outstanding leadership and a remarkable track record of executing at scale alongside institutional investors – as Nxtra scales to become India’s leading data center business.”
Navroz D. Udwadia, Co-Founder, Alpha Wave Global, added, “India has an immense AI opportunity ahead of it — Indians already meaningfully interact with and on Chat GPT, Claude and other AI platforms. As such India is set to see its data center capacity grow meaningfully to keep up with hyperscaler and LLM demand.”
Headquartered in New Delhi, Nxtra operates 14 large core data centers and over 120 edge facilities across India, offering co-location, cloud infrastructure, managed hosting, data backup, disaster recovery, and edge computing services. It has a facility in Pune and is developing additional AI-ready campuses in Chennai, Mumbai, and Kolkata. Nxtra has recently partnered with Google to build a gigawatt-scale AI data center campus, backed by a US$15 billion investment.