When Google announced its landmark $15 billion investment in an AI hub in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh - its largest investment in India to date - the move marked a pivotal moment in India's digital transformation. But what makes this announcement particularly significant is the strategic partnership model it represents, bringing together American tech giant Google wi th Indian infrastructure leaders AdaniConneX and Bharti Airtel. This collaboration reveals both the promise and the peril of India's path to becoming an AI-first nation.
Spanning 2026-2030, this isn't merely another data centre. It's a comprehensive reimagining of India's digital infrastructure, designed to position the country as a global AI hub serving not just its own 1.4 billion citizens, but Asia and beyond.
A Massive Infrastructural Leap
The scope of this investment is comprehensive and ambitious. At its core lies a purpose-built data centre campus with gigawatt-scale compute capacity - infrastructure built to the same standards that power Google's global services, including Search, YouTube, Gmail, and Workspace. This is enterprise-grade computing power designed to handle the most demanding AI workloads.
The partnership structure shows sophisticated coordination. AdaniConneX will lead the construction of the data centre campus and spearhead green energy solutions to power the facility sustainably, addressing one of AI infrastructure's biggest challenges: massive energy requirements. Bharti Airtel brings critical connectivity, establishing a state-of-the-art Cable Landing Station to host Google's new international subsea gateway.
This subsea cable component deserves special attention. By bringing multiple international cables to land in Visakhapatnam, Google is creating an essential connectivity hub on India's eastern coast, complementing existing landings in Mumbai and Chennai. This provides crucial route diversity and resilience to India's digital backbone, making Visakhapatnam a critical node in global data flows.
The investment also includes expanded fibre-optic networks, new transmission lines, and clean energy generation and storage systems. This holistic approach - addressing compute, connectivity, and clean energy simultaneously - demonstrates the integrated thinking required for modern digital infrastructure.
Ripple Effects
The advantages extend far beyond construction jobs and operational employment. The hub is designed to deliver high-performance, low-latency services that businesses, developers, and researchers need to build and scale AI-powered solutions. This creates a platform effect - enabling countless innovations built atop the infrastructure.
Consider the sectoral impact. Healthcare startups can develop diagnostic AI tools with computational power to process medical imaging at scale. Agricultural technology companies can create precision farming solutions leveraging real-time data. Financial technology firms can deploy sophisticated fraud detection algorithms. Educational platforms can offer AI-powered personalised learning. The infrastructure removes one of the biggest barriers to AI adoption: access to computational resources.
The investment aligns directly with the Government of India's Viksit Bharat 2047 vision. Indian startups won't need to rely solely on overseas cloud services; they'll have low-latency, high-performance infrastructure locally. Moreover, the hub will serve global functions - services powered from Visakhapatnam will serve Asia and beyond. This positions India not as merely a consumer market but as an export hub for AI services.
The job creation potential spans construction, operations, clean energy development, and the broader ecosystem of AI-focused businesses that will cluster around such infrastructure. More importantly, it creates opportunities for Indian engineers and data scientists to work on cutting-edge AI systems without emigrating - addressing brain drain while building local expertise.
But, Some Questions
Yet, beneath the gleaming promise lie troubling questions about digital sovereignty that India must confront clearly. When critical national infrastructure involves foreign corporations holding significant control, questions of autonomy inevitably arise.
The first concern is structural dependency. While AdaniConneX leads construction and Airtel provides connectivity, the AI capabilities, software stack, and fundamental technologies remain Google's intellectual property. India gains infrastructure but doesn't necessarily gain the deep technological capabilities that truly matter in the AI age. It's the difference between hosting computing power and knowing how to build the algorithms that define its value.
Who Runs This Revolution?
Data governance presents thornier issues. The hub will process enormous quantities of data from Indian businesses, consumers, and organisations. Who truly controls this data? What safeguards exist against exploitation? While India has made strides with its Digital Personal Data Protection Act, enforcement against global tech giants remains challenging. The asymmetry of power between Google and national regulators is stark.
There's also algorithmic sovereignty. If Indian businesses and government services become deeply dependent on Google's AI infrastructure and tools, they effectively cede control over algorithms that increasingly govern economic and social life. AI bias isn't hypothetical - it's well-documented. Systems trained primarily on Western datasets may perpetuate biases in Indian contexts, from hiring algorithms to content moderation.
The partnership structure, while involving Indian firms, still concentrates ultimate control in Google's hands. Google determines how the AI stack operates, what services are prioritised, and crucially, what data policies govern operations. This resembles historical patterns where local partners facilitated foreign presence while fundamental power dynamics remained unchanged.
This investment exists within the broader US-China AI competition. Artificial intelligence is increasingly viewed as a strategic technology for the 21st century, and the competition extends to standards-setting and alliance-building. India, as the world's most populous democracy and a major economy, is being courted by both camps.
Google's investment, explicitly framed as "anchoring the next phase of US-India tech cooperation", aligns with strengthening US-India relations. The choice of Visakhapatnam on India's eastern coast, facing Southeast Asia where American and Chinese influence compete intensely, carries strategic significance. A major connectivity hub here strengthens digital ties along American-aligned architecture.
What India Needs To Do Next
India needs a sophisticated strategy that maximises benefits while building genuine autonomy. Several imperatives emerge:
First, insist on meaningful technology transfer and capacity building, not just infrastructure. Contracts should mandate extensive training programmes, collaborative research with Indian institutions, and open-source contributions that build domestic expertise. Indian engineers must understand not just how to operate Google's systems, but how to build competitive alternatives.
Second, strengthen and rigorously enforce data governance frameworks. This might include data taxes ensuring that economic value from Indian data accrues to Indian society, mandatory local processing requirements, and algorithmic transparency obligations. Implementation and enforcement will determine whether regulations are meaningful or merely symbolic.
Third, accelerate investment in indigenous AI research and development. Initiatives like the India AI Mission and research centers at IITs need substantial, sustained funding. The goal isn't rejecting foreign investment but creating genuine alternatives. Israel's cybersecurity success - leveraging foreign investment while cultivating unique strengths - offers a relevant model.
Finally, participate actively in shaping global AI governance frameworks. This means proposing alternative regulatory models and building coalitions with other developing nations to ensure that international norms protect against digital colonialism while enabling beneficial cooperation.
Google's $15 billion commitment with AdaniConneX and Airtel represents India's arrival as a key player in the AI age. The infrastructure is genuinely impressive: gigawatt-scale computing, international connectivity gateways, clean energy systems, and enterprise-grade AI capabilities. The potential benefits across sectors are substantial. Now comes the harder work of ensuring India shapes the intelligence that flows through it, rather than being shaped by it. The foundations are being laid not just for data centres, but for India's position in the global AI order.
(Subimal Bhattacharjee advises on technology policy issues and is former country head of General Dynamics)
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author
