source: techcrunch ai: airtrunk commits $30b to build 5gw of ai data centers in india
level: business
airtrunk, backed by blackstone, announced a $30 billion investment to develop 5 gigawatts of new data center capacity in india by 2030. the australian company entered india earlier this year by acquiring lumina cloudinfra and already has a pipeline of about 600mw across mumbai, chennai, and hyderabad. the commitment highlights india's growing role as a hub for ai infrastructure, with data center capacity projected to rise from 1.5gw today to as much as 8gw by 2030, according to bernstein.
the indian government has offered tax exemptions through 2047 to foreign cloud providers running overseas workloads from indian data centers. airtrunk has begun groundwork, with maharashtra's chief minister noting a letter of intent for land at the raigad pen growth center for a 3gw data center costing about $21 billion. ceo robin khuda met with prime minister narendra modi, who said the investment would strengthen india's position in cloud computing and ai.
airtrunk joins amazon, google, microsoft, openai, and others investing in indian infrastructure. however, data centers require significant electricity, water, and land, with deloitte estimating asia pacific build-outs could need tens of terawatt-hours of additional power by decade's end. khuda cited government support, technical talent, and renewable energy access as key factors.
why it matters: large-scale data center investments in india signal expanding global ai compute capacity, which could affect cloud costs and availability for ai workloads.
source: techcrunch ai: airtrunk commits $30b to build 5gw of ai data centers in india