BigTech

Big Tech's $10Bn bet to make India a global AI data centre hub

Pratap Vikram Singh

January 14, 2025 | 11 Min Read

With AWS planning 800MW-1GW of AI data centre capacity and Microsoft committing $3 billion, India is set to become a major AI infrastructure hub for both Asia and parts of Europe.

Key Takeaways

Thanks to AI, India is witnessing a new data centre gold rush. Unlike cloud data centres, AI ones being built will serve Asia and even Europe
The CapTable has learnt that AWS has plans to build its largest AI data centres outside the US in India. The IT power load of this setup will be ~800MW
To achieve this, AWS is going all out to buy AI data centre capacity from anyone who can meet its requirements. It is even looking beyond its traditional colocation partners
The massive energy needs of these data centres are bound to strain power grids, making renewable energy the order of the day

When Nvidia Founder and CEO Jensen Huang visited India in October 2024, he had sage advice for the country: invest in artificial intelligence (AI) data centres. “There's a new manufacturing industry. Don't wait 20 years to get into it. Start now by harvesting and processing data here and then exporting the intelligence," Huang said at NVidia’s AI Summit held in Mumbai.

This shift is well underway. Amazon Web Services (AWS)—the cloud computing arm of Amazon—is quietly leasing newly constructed, industrial-grade buildings in Navi Mumbai, a suburb on the periphery of the country’s financial capital.

AWS is not only leasing buildings from its old-time data centre partners, otherwise known as colocation providers, such as NTT, Sify, and CtrlS, but is even partnering with many newer PE-backed data centre operators to meet the requirement. The latter—including BlackRock-backed Lumina, Singapore-based PDG, Colt, and Digital Edge, which have been building large facilities in Navi Mumbai and were looking for tenants—have signed up AWS as their first customer.

The company intends to use these to establish one of the largest AI infrastructure setups in Asia, three well-placed sources close to AWS and its partner data centre operators told The CapTable. While the company is yet to go public with its plans, the upcoming AI data centres will be AWS’ largest outside its home country of the US.

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