Blackstone-backed data center operator 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 said it will develop 5 gigawatts of new data center capacity in India, one of the largest commitments in the South Asian nation’s digital infrastructure sector. AirTrunk entered India earlier this year with the acquisition of Lumina CloudInfra.
AirTrunk’s commitment underscores India’s growing attractiveness as an AI infrastructure hub, as technology companies and investors look for new places to expand computing power. Data center capacity in the country is expected to increase to 8GW by 2030 from about 1.5GW today, according to research firm Bernstein.
The Indian government has also taken steps to attract investment in AI infrastructure. Earlier this year, New Delhi granted foreign cloud providers a tax exemption until 2047 on services sold overseas if those workloads are run in Indian data centers.
AirTrunk has already started laying the groundwork for its expansion into the country. Earlier this week, the Chief Minister of Maharashtra, Devendra Fadnavis, said in an X post that the western Indian state has exchanged a letter of intent for the allocation of land at the Raigad Pen Growth Center, where AirTrunk is planning a 3GW data center involving an investment of about R2 trillion (about $21 billion). The company already has a development pipeline of about 600MW in Mumbai, Chennai and Hyderabad.
AirTrunk did not respond to questions about whether the proposed Raigad project would be the maximum capacity of the planned 5GW, 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 major investments in cloud and AI infrastructure, while Indian companies Reliance Industries, Adani Group, and TCS have made major plans to expand data center capacity.
However, data centers require large amounts of electricity, water and land, and industry executives and analysts have pointed to resource issues as a potential bottleneck, particularly in terms of energy.
Deloitte estimates that data center construction in Asia Pacific 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 wealth of technical talent, and the availability of renewable energy, Khuda said.
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