Blackstone-backed AirTrunk said on Friday it will invest $30 billion in India by 2030, adding to a wave of commitments from technology and infrastructure groups seeking to expand computing capacity in the country.
The Australian company he said will deploy 5 gigawatts of new data center capacity in India, one of the South Asian nation’s largest digital infrastructure commitments. AirTrunk entered India earlier this year through the acquisition of Lumina CloudInfra.
AirTrunk’s commitment underscores India’s growing appeal as a destination for AI infrastructure as technology companies and investors look to new geographies to expand computing capacity. The data center capacity in the country is is expected to increase to up to 8 GW by 2030 from about 1.5 GW today, according to research firm Bernstein.
The Indian government has also taken steps to attract investment in AI infrastructure. Earlier this year, New Delhi offered foreign cloud providers tax exemptions until 2047 on services sold abroad if those workloads are run from Indian data centers.
AirTrunk has already started laying the groundwork for its expansion into the country. Earlier this week, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said in a post on X that the western Indian state had exchanged a letter of intent to grant land at the Raigad Pen Growth Center, where AirTrunk is planning a 3GW data center involving an investment of about ₹2 trillion (about $21 billion). The company already has a development pipeline of around 600 MW in Mumbai, Chennai and Hyderabad.
AirTrunk did not respond to questions about whether the proposed Raigad project would account for most of the planned 5 GW capacity or whether it plans to make additional developments elsewhere in India.
The announcement follows a meeting between AirTrunk CEO Robin Khuda and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who said in a post on X that the planned investment will help strengthen India’s position as a global hub for cloud computing and artificial intelligence.
AirTrunk joins a growing list of companies investing in infrastructure in the country. Amazon, Google, Microsoft, OpenAI and Uber have announced significant investments in cloud and AI infrastructure, while Indian companies Reliance Industries, Adani Group and TCS have drawn up ambitious plans to expand data center capacity.
However, data centers require vast amounts of electricity, water and land, and industry executives and analysts have pointed to resource issues as a potential bottleneck, particularly when it comes to energy.
Deloitte estimates Building data centers in the Asia-Pacific region could require tens of terawatt hours of additional electricity by the end of the decade.
AirTrunk’s investment thesis is supported by government support, a large pool of technical talent and access to renewable energy, Khuda said.
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