Google picks India for $15 billion AI super hub, its biggest outside the U.S.

Dubai: Tech giant Google has announced a landmark $15 billion (Dh55 billion) investment to establish its first-ever gigawatt-scale Artificial Intelligence (AI) hub in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, marking its biggest AI centre outside the United States.

The announcement came at the ‘Bharat AI Shakti’ event in New Delhi, where Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the initiative would accelerate India’s AI innovation and strengthen the country’s growing digital economy. Pichai, who discussed the project with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, said the new hub “combines gigawatt-scale compute capacity, a new international subsea gateway, and large-scale energy infrastructure,” designed to power enterprises and users across India.

Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, said the Visakhapatnam facility will be part of Google’s global AI network spanning 12 countries. “It’s the largest AI hub we are investing in anywhere outside the U.S.,” he said, adding that the project includes a subsea cable landing station to connect India directly to Google’s worldwide network.

Kurian emphasised that the hub will not only host advanced AI infrastructure but also act as a digital backbone for India’s connectivity and cloud ecosystem.

With this $15 billion investment over five years, Google aims to make India a cornerstone of its global AI expansion — reflecting both the country’s technological rise and its pivotal role in the next wave of digital transformation.