Blackstone-backed data center operator AirTrunk said Thursday it will invest $30 billion in India by 2030, adding to commitments from technology and infrastructure groups looking to expand the country’s computing capacity.
The Australian company announced it will develop 5 gigawatts of new data center capacity in India. This is one of the South Asian country’s largest initiatives in the digital infrastructure sector. AirTrunk entered India through the acquisition of Lumina CloudInfra earlier this year.
AirTrunk’s efforts highlight India’s growing attractiveness as an AI infrastructure destination as technology companies and investors seek new geographies to expand their computing capacity. According to research firm Bernstein, domestic data center capacity is expected to increase from the current approximately 1.5 GW to 8 GW by 2030.
The Indian government is also taking steps to attract investment in AI infrastructure. Earlier this year, New Delhi offered tax exemptions until 2047 to foreign cloud providers if workloads for services sold overseas are run from Indian data centers.
AirTrunk has already begun laying the groundwork for expansion in the country. Earlier this week, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said in a post on X that the western Indian state had signed a letter of intent for land allocation for the Raigad Pen Growth Centre. AirTrunk plans to invest about ₹2 trillion (about $21 billion) to build a 3GW data center there. The company already has a development pipeline of around 600MW across Mumbai, Chennai and Hyderabad.
AirTrunk did not respond to questions about whether the proposed Raigad project would account for the bulk of the planned 5GW capacity or whether it had plans for additional development elsewhere in India.
The announcement comes after a meeting between AirTrunk CEO Robin Khuda and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who said in a post on X that the planned investments will help strengthen India’s position as a global hub for cloud computing and artificial intelligence.
AirTrunk joins a growing list of companies investing in the nation’s infrastructure. Amazon, Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Uber announced major investments in cloud and AI infrastructure, while Indian companies Reliance Industries, Adani Group, and TCS laid out ambitious plans to expand data center capacity.
But data centers require vast amounts of power, water and land, and industry executives and analysts have pointed to potential bottlenecks in resource issues, especially power.
Deloitte estimates that data center construction in Asia Pacific could require tens of terawatt-hours of additional power by the end of 2020.
AirTrunk’s investment thesis is supported by government support, a wealth of technical talent and access to renewable energy, Cuda said.
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