Tech giant Google on Tuesday marked the ceremonial start of work on its largest artificial intelligence hub outside of the United States with a groundbreaking ceremony in India.

The firm promised in October 2025 to spend $15 billion over five years to construct the vast centre in Visakhapatnam, a southeastern port in Andhra Pradesh state of around two million people, popularly known as “Vizag”.

“Today marks the first concrete milestone in Google’s largest commitment to India’s digital future,” Bikash Koley, Google’s vice president for global infrastructure, told the ceremony.

“This project represents a $15 billion blueprint to deliver a full-stack AI ecosystem,” he added.

“At its core is our gigawatt-scale data centre campus, purpose-built for the immense computational demand of the AI era, powering services like Gemini and Google Search.”

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Nara Lokesh, information technology minister for Andhra Pradesh state, said he was “excited as we embark on this journey to build India’s most coveted AI and deep-tech hub”.

Vizag is being pitched as a landing point for submarine internet cables linking India to Singapore.

“By establishing Vizag as an international subsea gateway, we will add vital diversity from the existing landings, in Mumbai and Chennai, increasing the resilience of India’s digital backbone and improving economic security,” Koley added.

“New strategic fibre optic routes will further connect India with the rest of the world.”

Globally, data centres are an area of phenomenal growth, fuelled by the need to store massive amounts of digital data and to train and run energy-intensive AI tools.

“This is a pivotal moment for India, Vizag, and for Google,” Koley added.