Hyderabad: Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu laid the foundation stone for the development of the $15 billion Google Cloud India AI Hub, touted as India’s and Andhra Pradesh’s largest data centre project, in Visakhapatnam Tuesday.
Announced in October 2025, the hub is promised to deliver a full-stack AI ecosystem. It is being purpose-built to meet the computational demands of Google’s AI-era services.
Under the project, three data centres are planned to be developed across roughly 600 acres. These will span the Tharluwada, Adavivaram, and Rambilli villages in Visakhapatnam in the northern AP region. Their combined capacity is expected to be one gigawatt.
AdaniConneX and Airtel Nxtra are partners in the project. The two companies will lead the construction of the data centre buildings and connecting infrastructure, a release issued by the AP government read. The project would enable Google to deploy advanced AI capabilities and scale digital services in India, it added.
The groundbreaking ceremony was attended by United States Consul General Laura Williams, Google Cloud’s Global Infrastructure Vice President Bikash Kohley, Union Minister for IT, Electronics, and Railways Ashwini Vaishnaw, Bharti Enterprises Vice Chairman Rakesh Mittal, and Adani Group directors Karan and Jeet Adani, among others.
Chief Minister Naidu hailed the moment as a “historic day” for Andhra and India. “Today, India has witnessed two sunrises in the East—one in the sky, and the other in Andhra, with the state emerging as the next tech hub in the country. Google’s data centre will add to the innovation-driven ecosystem in the state,” he said, addressing dignitaries and the public gathered at the site.
The project is being positioned as a major step towards building a multi-gigawatt digital infrastructure ecosystem in the state.
Google’s Bikash Kohley said the company’s AI stack would help accelerate India’s digital transformation. “Google is proud to bring this AI hub to a billion-plus Indians. This investment is crucial, and it includes the America-India initiative to deliver high-capacity, low-latency connectivity that India needs to lead the global AI economy. By establishing Vizag as an international subsea gateway, we will add vital diversity from the existing landings in Mumbai and Chennai,” he said.
Google, he added, was committed to being a long-term partner and catalyst for India’s economic and environmental resilience.
Vizag MP M. Sri Bharath said Visakhapatnam’s coastal location made it highly suitable for an international submarine cable landing station. The government’s long-term vision, he said, was to reach a total capacity of 6.5 gigawatts. With the date centres upcoming, Visakhapatnam was poised to emerge as a key AI gateway for Asia, he added.
Beyond infrastructure, the Google data centres are expected to generate significant employment opportunities, according to ministers and officials. Jobs are likely to be created in sectors such as Artificial Intelligence, cloud operations, maintenance, cybersecurity, cloud architecture, and data science. Revenue generated from the data centres, they say, will strengthen the state’s economy. The project, they add, will also likely attract investment in allied sectors, be it power systems, cooling technologies, server manufacturing, or networking. The government was making arrangements to ensure a green energy supply for data centres proposed by Google and other technology firms, a release issued earlier had said.
Industry experts in the AI-Data Centre economy sector, contacted by ThePrint, said that the scale of the project would increase the resilience of India’s digital backbone, and the new fibre optic routes would connect India with the rest of the world.
Hailing the project as a significant start, Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw called the investment a fruition of India’s work in the IT sector over the last 30 years. “While the project is in recognition of all the work India has done since the late 1990s, we missed the bus in the manufacturing sector. So, this time around, our government at the Centre and in the state wants to ensure that we are prepared to seize the manufacturing opportunity in all technology cycles—semiconductors, quantum tech, space tech, rare earths, and AI.”
The event was accompanied by the Bharat AI Shakti Conclave, aimed to explore how to translate and accelerate Google’s anchor investment into a tangible economic value chain for the region. It was a first-of-its-kind conference held to serve as a unique platform for convening suppliers, industry partners, and infrastructure stakeholders.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
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