In a landmark development, Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Tuesday announced the company’s first-ever Artificial Intelligence (AI) hub in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh — its largest outside the United States.
Sharing details of the project on social media, Pichai said he had a discussion with Prime Minister Narendra Modi about the initiative and its role in advancing India’s AI capabilities.
“Great to speak with India PM @narendramodi @OfficialINDIAai to share our plans for the first-ever Google AI hub in Visakhapatnam, a landmark development,” Pichai wrote.
“This hub combines gigawatt-scale compute capacity, a new international subsea gateway, and large-scale energy infrastructure. Through it, we will bring our industry-leading technology to enterprises and users in India, accelerating AI innovation and driving growth across the country,” he added.
The announcement was made during ‘Bharat AI Shakti’, an event hosted by Google in New Delhi, where the company revealed a $15 billion investment over the next five years to establish a gigawatt-scale AI campus in Visakhapatnam.
According to Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, the Visakhapatnam facility will be a key part of Google’s global AI network spanning 12 countries.
“We will bring our subsea cable infrastructure here and connect it to our global network. This will not only act as a landing station for numerous cables but also provide a digital backbone connecting different parts of India,” Kurian said.
“We are not just bringing AI technology, but also a digital infrastructure through our subsea cable and network connectivity hub,” he added.
Kurian highlighted that this will be Google’s largest AI investment anywhere in the world outside the U.S., underscoring the company’s long-standing commitment to India.
“It represents a capital investment over the next five years of USD 15 billion. Google has been in India for 21 years, employing 14,000 people across five locations. We launched our cloud services in India several years ago and now operate two regions — New Delhi and Mumbai — while also manufacturing our devices here,” he said.
Kurian further explained that the Visakhapatnam AI hub will eventually scale to multiple gigawatts and serve as a global connectivity centre, supporting India’s growing role in the global digital and AI ecosystem.
