India to get biggest data center investment outside of US with Google pledging $15 billion project

• Google will invest $15 billion in India’s largest AI hub outside the U.S
• The center partners with Adani and Airtel, plus a new subsea gateway
• Global AI data center race intensifies with major projects in UAE, Argentina, and Saudi Arabia

The explosion in Generative AI use across the world means now that companies are investing in new data centres to keep up with the extreme boom in infrastructure demand. The latest of these is Google’s $15 billion investment to build a data center campus in southern India.

This investment will roll out across a five year project, and is set to be one of the largest investments ever into the country. “It’s the largest AI hub that we are going to be investing in anywhere in the world outside of the U.S.,” said Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian.

There have been rising concerns about the environmental impact of data centres, as well as the rising energy costs for those living in their vicinity. Appropriately, the state IT minister Nara Lokesh commented; “In an era where data is the new oil, such initiatives will serve as a strategic advantage.”

Data is the new oil

The 1 gigawatt data center is planned for the city of Visakhapatnam, and it is set to be the largest in capacity and investment size in Asia. This deal was preceded by ‘a year of intense discussions and relentless effort,” and “is just the beginning,” Lokesh said in a post on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter).

This new project is a partnership between Google and Adani Group and India’s Airtel – and the project includes a new international subsea gateway.

The race for AI data centers is on, as a number of are either building, or have recently announced plans to build AI data centers and accompanying infrastructure. Reuters recently announced that the first 200 megawatts of a planned 5-gigawatt artificial intelligence campus in the United Arab Emirates should come online next year, citing an official from Abu Dhabi-backed cloud and AI firm G42.

This follows Microsoft’s announcement that it will build the ‘worlds most powerful data center’ in the latest billion-dollar AI spending splurge – powered by hundreds of thousands of Nvidia GPUs, connected with enough fiber to wrap around the world four times.

Amazon isn’t left out though, with its capital expenditure for data centers recently surpassing $100 billion as the firm looks to increase its 32% cloud market share.

Via: Reuters

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Ellen has been writing for almost four years, with a focus on post-COVID policy whilst studying for BA Politics and International Relations at the University of Cardiff, followed by an MA in Political Communication. Before joining TechRadar Pro as a Junior Writer, she worked for Future Publishing’s MVC content team, working with merchants and retailers to upload content.