Google said Tuesday it will invest $15 billion over the next five years to build an artificial intelligence data center in India's southern state of Andhra Pradesh, marking the U.S. technology giant's largest single investment in the country and its biggest AI infrastructure project outside the United States.
Announcing the project in New Delhi, Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian said the facility in the port city of Visakhapatnam would serve as the company's "largest AI hub" beyond American shores. "This long-term vision we have is to accelerate India's own AI mission," Kurian said at the event attended by Indian information technology and finance ministers.
The data center campus will have an initial capacity of one gigawatt, according to Indian state officials, who earlier estimated the total project cost at $10 billion and projected the creation of more than 188,000 jobs. Andhra Pradesh's Minister for Human Resources Development, Nara Lokesh, described the deal as "a year of intense discussions and relentless effort" and said "this is just the beginning," in a post on X.
The investment underscores Google parent Alphabet Inc.'s accelerating push into AI and cloud infrastructure amid a global race among tech giants to expand data capacity. In July, the company raised its 2025 capital expenditure forecast to $85 billion, citing "strong and growing demand for our Cloud products and services." The Indian expansion follows Google's separate $25 billion plan to build AI and data infrastructure across several U.S. states.
In India, the Visakhapatnam project will be developed by Google's local subsidiary Raiden Infotech and will include three new campuses, local media reported. Google has partnered with Adani Group and Bharti Airtel to provide supporting infrastructure, including an international subsea gateway to improve data connectivity.
The move comes amid rising geopolitical friction between Washington and New Delhi, where tensions over tariffs and a stalled trade deal have fueled anti-American sentiment. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has publicly urged a boycott of foreign goods, while the U.S. recently imposed a 50% tariff on imported Indian products. "This initiative creates substantial economic and societal opportunities for both India and the United States," Google said in a statement, though it did not address the trade dispute.
Despite the political backdrop, Indian officials have privately assured U.S. firms of a stable investment environment, according to people familiar with the matter. Microsoft and Amazon have already spent billions building cloud data centers in India, a country with nearly one billion internet users and a rapidly expanding digital economy.
