- Google to invest $15 billion in India’s largest AI center outside the US
- The center partners with Adani and Airtel, along with a new underwater gateway
- Global race for AI data centers heats up with major projects in UAE, Argentina and Saudi Arabia
The explosion in the use of generative AI across the world now means that companies are investing in new data centers to meet the extreme surge in demand for infrastructure. The latest is Google’s $15 billion investment to build a data center campus in southern India.
This investment will span a five-year project and is expected to be one of the largest investments ever made in the country. “This is the largest AI center that we will invest in anywhere in the world outside of the United States,” said Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud.
There are growing concerns about the environmental impact of data centers as well as rising energy costs for people living nearby. Aptly, state IT Minister Nara Lokesh commented, “In an era where data is the new oil, such initiatives will be a strategic advantage.”
Data is the new oil
The 1 gigawatt data center is planned for Visakhapatnam city and is expected to be the largest in terms of capacity and investment in Asia. The deal was preceded by “a year of intense discussions and relentless efforts” and “is only the beginning,” Lokesh said in a post on social media platform X (formerly Twitter).
This new project is a partnership between Google and Adani Group and India’s Airtel – and the project includes a new international underwater gateway.
The race for AI data centers is on, as a number of them are building or have recently announced plans to build AI data centers and the infrastructure that goes with them. PK Press Club recently reported that the first 200 megawatts of a planned 5-gigawatt artificial intelligence campus in the United Arab Emirates are expected to come online next year, citing an official at Abu Dhabi-backed cloud and AI company G42.
This follows Microsoft’s announcement that it will build the “world’s most powerful data center” in the latest billion-dollar AI spending spree – powered by hundreds of thousands of Nvidia GPUs, connected with enough fiber to circle the world four times.
Amazon is no slouch, however, with its data center capital spending recently surpassing $100 billion as the company seeks to increase its 32% market share in the cloud.
By: PK Press Club
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