Google and Adani’s $15 billion Vizag megaproject could redefine India’s digital future, merging AI infrastructure, renewable power, and data sovereignty into one bold experiment.
When Google and the Adani Group announced plans to jointly develop a $15 billion AI data center campus in Visakhapatnam, it was a significant step in India’s effort to strengthen its digital infrastructure. The multi-year project, scheduled to run between 2026 and 2030, aims to establish the country’s first large-scale, AI-focused data hub.
However, this initiative raises essential questions about India’s readiness in terms of its energy capacity, environmental sustainability, data protection framework, and its ability to manage and maintain such extensive, high-density infrastructure.
A Strategic Shift Eastward
Choosing Visakhapatnam shows a strategic move from the usual data center clusters in Mumbai, Pune, and Chennai. The city’s deep-water port, planned submarine cable landing station, and strategic position along the Asia-Pacific data routes make it an ideal location for international connectivity. Google has partnered with AdaniConneX, a joint venture between Adani Enterprises and EdgeConneX, a U.S.-based Company, to build and operate the facility. Airtel will support the project’s network and subsea connectivity. The campus is expected to deliver gigawatt-scale computing capacity, capable of powering advanced AI workloads while providing lower latency and greater reliability for enterprises in India.
Sanchit Vir Gogia, Chief Analyst at Greyhound Research, notes that the Vizag hub also represents India’s first real pivot from digital consumer to digital producer. Still, it exposes the unfinished architecture of AI sovereignty. While the project will inject compute power, subsea connectivity, and thousands of technical jobs into India’s economy, Gogia cautions that such gains will remain infrastructural unless paired with indigenous ownership of algorithms, datasets, and R&D. “AI leadership is not achieved by hosting global models; it comes from building, training, and governing them within one’s borders,” he explains.
Aligning with India’s AI Ambitions
This initiative closely aligns with India’s vision to become a global AI hub, as described in national strategies and digital policy plans. By localizing compute capacity, it could enable Indian businesses and public institutions to process and train data-heavy AI models within the country. This goal also aligns with the country’s growing data sovereignty objectives under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act (DPDP), which requires certain types of sensitive data to remain within India. In theory, the Visakhapatnam data hub could help meet these requirements while improving local cloud resilience.
Gogia adds that the strategic value of the Vizag hub lies in what India builds on top of that compute. “The government must leverage this partnership to insist on local innovation mandates, capacity transfer, and participation in global model development pipelines,” he says. By doing so, India can transform a foreign-led data center into a sovereign platform for national AI creation, ensuring that the country’s digital infrastructure also fuels its own intelligence ecosystem.
Energy and Environmental Challenges
A project of this size needs a reliable and sustainable power source. The data center will require around one gigawatt of electricity, similar to what a small city uses. Google and Adani have stated that renewable energy will be central to the project’s power plan, aligning with Google’s goal of operating on 24×7 carbon-free energy. However, incorporating continuous renewable supply into India’s grid remains tough due to its reliance on thermal power. The project’s environmental impact will also hinge on how it manages water use for cooling, especially in a coastal and ecologically sensitive area. Transparency regarding energy sources, storage options, and water management practices will be crucial to determining if the project’s sustainability claims stand the test of time.
Sanchit Vir Gogia observes that India’s grid is numerically strong but structurally uneven, an asset that can sustain AI growth only if hyperscale developers treat energy as infrastructure, not merely as an input. He points out that AI data centers consume continuous, high-quality load that must be firm through 24×7 renewable PPAs, battery reserves, and redundant feeders. “The Google–Adani blueprint acknowledges this reality; it merges a data center with a power utility,” Gogia notes. “This model will define the next generation of AI campuses, grid-tolerant, grid-independent, and locally circular in their energy sourcing.”
He further explains that India’s readiness will be measured not by the megawatts available, but by the megawatts assured, and Vizag will test how quickly policy, permitting, and infrastructure can synchronize to power the intelligence India seeks to host.
Economic Potential and Employment
The Andhra Pradesh government estimates that the investment will create 1.88 lakh direct and indirect jobs and contribute approximately ₹48,000 crore to the state’s economy. While these figures underline the project’s economic potential, large data centers generally create more long-term digital capabilities than jobs. The lasting impact could come from developing specialized skills in AI operations, power systems, and network management, which are essential for maintaining large digital infrastructures but currently lack adequate talent in India.
According to Gogia, the accurate measure of success will not be job numbers alone but the creation of domain expertise and capacity-building ecosystems around AI operations. He emphasizes that democratizing access to computing for Indian enterprises, banks, hospitals, and public agencies could catalyze a new layer of innovation if supported by indigenous development.
Regulatory and Policy Dimensions
The project will operate within a complex regulatory environment that includes obtaining land, power, and environmental approvals, as well as compliance with the DPDP Act. Given that construction and rollout will cover several years and election cycles, steady policy support will be vital. At the same time, the initiative demonstrates the need for clear, unified guidelines for AI data infrastructure across states that address not just investment incentives but also energy efficiency standards, emissions targets, and transparency obligations.
Gogia highlights that India’s AI future depends on policy coherence, particularly in synchronizing incentives for renewable energy, data localization, and R&D. Without these alignments, he warns, India risks “settling for infrastructure when the prize is intelligence.”
Technology Supply and Hardware Constraints
The growth of AI data centers worldwide has put a strain on global supply chains for chips and advanced processors. Google has not revealed which versions of its Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) will be used in India. The availability and performance of these processors will determine the types of workloads the facility can support. India’s ability to operate such infrastructure will also rely on the strength of its technology ecosystem, including local suppliers, logistics, and specialized maintenance support.
Gogia notes that while hardware is a constraint, it’s also an opportunity for India to strengthen its local ecosystem. He argues that India must develop capabilities not only to deploy but also to service and optimize AI infrastructure, turning data centers into laboratories for continuous innovation.
Impact on India’s Digital Map
The Visakhapatnam project could help decentralize India’s data infrastructure, which is now concentrated in the western and southern regions. It may also encourage competitors like AWS, Microsoft, and Oracle to expand eastward, strengthening network resilience and reducing reliance on a few coastal nodes. For domestic enterprises, improved access to local compute could lead to faster data speeds, better regulatory alignment, and potentially lower latency for AI-driven services. However, it remains uncertain if this will result in cost benefits for Indian users.
Sustainability and Accountability
As AI workloads increase, so do concerns about the environmental impact of data centers. The Vizag campus presents an opportunity to set standards for responsible AI infrastructure through transparent reporting on energy use, carbon emissions, and water consumption. Incorporating credible sustainability metrics into the project’s operations could help India strike a balance between technological advancement and environmental responsibility, which regulators and international partners increasingly expect.
Sanchit Vir Gogia also points out that resilience must be viewed through a national lens. “When AI workloads underpin financial trading, logistics, and public safety, uptime becomes an issue of sovereignty,” he says. Visakhapatnam’s design, which meets Tier IV standards, features dual substations, battery energy storage, and flood-immune basements, reflecting a philosophy of operating through disruptions rather than merely surviving them. If executed as planned, the Vizag hub could become India’s first coastal facility engineered to maintain continuity through cyclones, setting a new benchmark for digital resilience in the AI era.
A Long-Term Test for Digital Readiness
The Google–Adani partnership shows a global belief in India’s potential as a hub for digital infrastructure. Yet, it also highlights the operational and regulatory hurdles India must overcome to support such large-scale projects. These include ensuring a stable energy supply, cultivating specialized skills, and maintaining coherent policies. If implemented with transparency and efficiency, the Visakhapatnam campus could represent a turning point, transforming India from a consumer of global AI technologies into a producer of AI-ready infrastructure that supports both businesses and public innovation.
Gogia concludes that the Visakhapatnam experiment will reveal whether India can truly synchronize policy, energy, and technology fast enough to power the intelligence it wants to host a defining test for the nation’s AI future.