AFP, New Delhi

Google said Tuesday it will invest $15 billion in India over the next five years, as it announced a giant data centre and artificial intelligence base in the country.

“It is the largest AI hub that we are investing in anywhere outside of the US,” Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian said at a ceremony in New Delhi.

Demand for AI tools and solutions is surging among businesses and individuals in India, which is projected to have more than 900 million internet users by year’s end.

Kurian announced “capital investment of $15 billion” over the five years and a “gigawatt-scale AI hub in Visakhapatnam”, a port city in the southeastern state of Andhra Pradesh.

Google plans for the centre to scale to multiple gigawatts, he added, comparing the project to “a digital backbone connecting different parts of India together”.

Globally, data centres are an area of phenomenal growth, fuelled by the need to store massive amounts of digital data, and to train and run energy-intensive AI tools.

Google chief Sundar Pichai said on X that he had spoken to Prime Minister Narendra Modi about the “landmark development”.

“This hub combines gigawatt-scale compute capacity, a new international subsea gateway, and large-scale energy infrastructure,” he wrote.

“Through it we will bring our industry-leading technology to enterprises and users in India, accelerating AI innovation and driving growth across the country.”