On Tuesday, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu and Union Railways and IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw broke ground for the Google Cloud India AI Hub at Turlavad village. Google has announced it will spend $15 billion over the next five years to build a purpose-built AI data centre for Google Gemeni and Google Search. The company is building the data centre in collaboration with Adani Connex and Nxtra by Airtel.
Bikash Koley, vice president of Google Global Infrastructure, said that the company will deploy its full AI stack in this data centre. He noted that the development of Visakhapatnam into an international cable gateway would improve India’s connectivity with global data flows.
Google is building three subsea cables to connect India with the global internet backbone. The first cable will link Visakhapatnam to South Africa and the US. The second will connect Vizag to Singapore, then Australia and the US West Coast. The third cable, though landing on the west coast, will connect Mumbai to Western Australia, strengthening India’s connectivity to the Pacific network. Together, these cables are designed to create redundant, low-latency global pathways, positioning Visakhapatnam as a new international data gateway.
Speaking on this occasion, N. Chandrababu Naidu said he could convince the prime minister, the finance minister and the IT minister once he understood that Google had plans to start a new campus in India. “From the first meeting to the land allocation, we could complete the entire process in 13 months,” and he urged the three companies to complete the campus by 28 September 2028. He thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, and IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw for their support.
AP IT minister Nara Lokesh, who played an instrumental role in attracting the Google AI data centre to the state, said the cities that can develop complete AI ecosystems and leverage them could create new jobs. “We are not just building an AI data centre here. We will attract the industries that could serve as value chain partners to Google, the companies that could use its services, we will develop a full-fledged ecosystem, and it is expected to generate about two lakh jobs,” he explained.
The Union IT minister Ashwin Vaishnaw predicted that Visakhapatnam would be known as “AI-patnam” as it is going to build one of the most advanced AI ecosystems in the world. He emphasised the need to advance in hardware manufacturing and explained India’s growth in electronics manufacturing over the last 10 years. “We used to have almost no base for electronics manufacturing, now, we are producing not only finished products, but all modules, sub-modules and components.”
He urged the international community to consider India as a “reliable and trustworthy” global partner in electronics. “Otherwise, even a 100-dollar chip could hold a million-dollar machine and expose even the most advanced economies,” he explained.
Google is collaborating with Adani ConneX and Airtel Nxtra to build the AI hub’s physical and digital backbone. Adani ConneX is responsible for developing the core infrastructure, including building the hyperscale data centre campus and ensuring a reliable, largely renewable energy supply to support power-intensive AI operations. Airtel Nxtra will focus on connectivity and operational support, bringing high-speed fibre networks, 5G capabilities, and subsea cable integration to connect the facility to global data ecosystems, while also contributing to data centre development and management. Together, they enable Google to run advanced AI workloads by combining robust infrastructure with seamless, low-latency connectivity.