Google has broken ground for its most ambitious project in India yet, the US$ 15 billion India AI hub in Vishakhapatnam. Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu, and Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, laid the foundation stone for the project, which would come up on 600 acres across Tarluvada, Adavivaram and Rambilli villages. Adani Connex and Nxtra by Airtel are partners in the project.
Readers would recall that the project was originally announced amidst much fanfare in October 2025. The project would feature “full-stack” AI infrastructure, including data centers, renewable energy sources, and an expanded fiber-optic network.
“This AI hub is a strategic blueprint designed to fuel the (Indian) government’s Voksit Bharat 2047 vision,” said Thomas Kurien, CEO, Google Cloud via a video message played during the ceremony. “We are deploying our full AI stack to employ every Indian consumer and enterprise, with immense compute power and tools to lead the world.”
Speaking on the occasion, Bikash Koley, VP, Global Infrastructure, Google said, “At its core is our GW-scale data center campus, purpose built for the immense computational demand of the AI era, powering services like Gemini and Google Search, for a billion plus Indians.” He added, “Crucially, this hub includes in the America-India Connect initiative to deliver high-capacity, low latency connectivity India needs to lead the global AI economy.”
Google’s AI hub investment includes construction of a new international subsea gateway, including multiple international subsea cables to land in Visakhapatnam on India’s eastern coast — connecting to Google’s more than two million miles of existing terrestrial and subsea cables. Bharti Airtel is spearheading this part of the project. It has previously landed international subsea cables in Mumbai and Chennai.
Rakesh Mittal, Vice Chairman, Bharti Enterprises, said, “Vizag (Vishakhapatnam) has historically been a gateway for maritime trade, and will now be a gateway to the intelligence age, for India and the world.”
Jeet Adani, representing the Adani Group, also spoke on the occasion and said, “We are here today, laying the foundation of a new era that brings together energy, data and connectivity to power India’s next phase of growth.” He reiterated, “The global AI race is not being defined by software alone, it is being defined by those who can build infrastructure beneath intelligence.”
The AI hub aims to deliver the high-performance and low-latency services that businesses and organizations need to build and scale their own AI-powered solutions, accelerate research and development, and ultimately help India secure its place as a global leader in the AI-driven future. When operational, the new data center campus will join Google’s network of existing AI data centers that spans 12 countries.
Also present during the ceremony were Andhra Pradesh’s State Education and IT Department Minister Nara Lokesh, several other state ministers, and public representatives including Ram Mohan Naidu Kinjarapu, Pemmasani Chandrasekhar, Srinivasa Varma among others.