Google to invest $15 billion to build data center hub in India; largest outside of the U.S. (www.cnbc.com)

Google announced a planned $15 billion investment to build a major data‑center and AI hub in Andhra Pradesh, India — described by the company as its largest AI facility outside the U.S. The rollout is scheduled over the next five years and reportedly will include three campuses in Visakhapatnam developed by Google’s Indian subsidiary, Raiden Infotech. Local officials have also characterized the project as roughly a 1‑gigawatt buildout, though earlier state commentary put the figure at about $10 billion; ministers framed the agreement as the product of “intense discussions” and “just the beginning.” For the AI/ML community this signals a significant expansion of cloud compute capacity in a fast‑growing market, easing latency and data‑localization constraints for Indian developers and enterprises while supporting large‑scale model training and inference workloads. Technically, a 1 GW site footprint implies substantial power, cooling and networking commitments aligned with trends of hyperscalers beefing up global AI infrastructure. The investment dovetails with Google’s broader capex increase (an $85B 2025 forecast and a separate $25B U.S. AI/data‑center plan), and highlights India’s rising role as a strategic node in the global cloud supply chain — likely accelerating competition, talent growth, and regional AI service availability.