Google, through its parent company Alphabet, is making a major strategic move in Asia with a $6 billion investment in a 1-gigawatt data center in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, India. This marks Google’s first data center investment in India and its largest in Asia in terms of both capacity and capital.
The project includes $2 billion earmarked for renewable energy infrastructure to power the facility, aligning with Google’s broader sustainability goals. This focus on clean energy reinforces its ESG commitments while supporting India’s drive for green infrastructure, Reuters news report said.
The Andhra Pradesh facility is part of a broader multi-billion-dollar regional expansion, with ongoing projects across Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand. Despite economic uncertainties and geopolitical pressures, Alphabet remains committed to spending around $75 billion globally this year to scale data center capacity, driven by the rising demand for AI and cloud services.
Google’s investment is also a key element of Andhra Pradesh’s post-state-split development push. The state aims to build 6 GW of data center capacity over the next five years—starting from nearly zero—with 1.6 GW already secured. Plans also include boosting connectivity infrastructure with three undersea cable landing stations in Visakhapatnam, envisioned to rival and eventually surpass Mumbai’s network capacity.
To meet the energy demands of data centers—an electricity-intensive sector—Andhra Pradesh plans to scale up to 10 GW of power generation capacity, largely from green sources, though some coal-based generation may supplement to ensure reliability.
In Malaysia, Google committed $2 billion to establish its first data center and Google Cloud region, a move expected to contribute about $3.2 billion to the country’s GDP by 2030 and support thousands of jobs. It also formed a sovereign cloud partnership with DNeX to meet data residency and privacy regulations CNBC reports.
In Thailand, a $1 billion project will build a new data center in Chonburi and a cloud region in Bangkok, aimed at supporting increasing demand for AI services and Google Cloud. Forecasts estimate $4 billion in economic boost by 2029 and creation of roughly 14,000 jobs per year during 2025–2029 Forbes reports.
Google recently completed a $5 billion expansion of its data center and cloud campus in Singapore, significantly increasing its infrastructure footprint and introducing industry-leading sustainability features.
Globally, Alphabet expects its capital expenditure to reach $75 billion in 2025, with much of that allocated to building new data centers, server, and networking infrastructure to support surging Cloud and AI demand. The company has broken ground on 11 new data center regions and seven subsea cable projects to improve global connectivity.
Rajani Baburajan
