Google to invest $6 billion in Andhra Pradesh Data Centre

Tech giant Google is set to invest a massive $6 billion in developing a 1-gigawatt data centre and supporting power infrastructure in Andhra Pradesh, marking Alphabet Inc.'s first data centre investment of this scale in India, government sources said on Wednesday. The project, to be established in the port city of Visakhapatnam, includes a $2 billion commitment to renewable energy, which will power the facility. Once completed, the data centre will be the largest of its kind in Asia in terms of both capacity and investment size. The move comes as part of Google's broader push to expand its data centre footprint across Asia, with other facilities planned in Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand. The Andhra Pradesh government has yet to make an official announcement, but senior state officials confirmed the development. Alphabet has not issued a public statement yet.

The state’s IT minister Nara Lokesh, who is currently in Singapore for investment talks, declined to comment directly on the Google deal. “There are certain announcements which are not yet public. In October, we will make those announcements,” he said. Andhra Pradesh, governed by a key ally of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has been aggressively courting high-value investments since it was bifurcated in 2014, losing Hyderabad—and with it a significant chunk of revenue—to the newly formed Telangana state. To mitigate the financial impact and boost its economic outlook, the state has focused on positioning itself as a hub for digital infrastructure. Lokesh said the state has already secured 1.6 GW in data centre investments, with a goal of reaching 6 GW over the next five years. “We expect the initial 1.6 GW to become operational within the next 24 months,” he noted, adding that this would surpass India’s current total operational data centre capacity of 1.4 GW.
The government also plans to build three subsea cable landing stations in Visakhapatnam to support the growing digital infrastructure. “We want to create a cable network that’s double the capacity of Mumbai’s today,” Lokesh said. These stations will be crucial for enabling fast, reliable international data connectivity. While the data centre will be primarily powered by renewable energy, a portion of the capacity will be coal-based to ensure consistent power supply. “Majority will end up being actually green energy, and that's the unique value proposition that we bring to the table,” a government official stated.