Reliance JV announces $11 bn investment to build 1 GW data centre hub in Andhra Pradesh

Digital Connexion, a joint venture between Reliance Industries, Brookfield Infrastructure and US-based Digital Realty, on Wednesday announced plans to invest about $11 billion by 2030 to build 1 gigawatt (GW) of data centre capacity in Andhra Pradesh.

The AI-native, purpose-built facilities will come up across 400 acres in Visakhapatnam, the digital infrastructure company said in a statement.

“Digital Connexion… announced an investment of approximately USD 11 billion over a period of five years till 2030 for building 1 gigawatt state-of-the-art AI-native, purpose-built data centres in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh across 400 acres of land,” it said.

Digital Connexion said the planned capacity would consume as much electricity as nearly half of Mumbai’s annual usage once fully operational.

Digital Connexion has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Andhra Pradesh Economic Development Board for the investment.

The investment comes amid a surge of global and domestic capital into India’s data infrastructure.

Google last month announced a $15 billion commitment to build an AI hub in the state, while Amazon has outlined plans to invest $12.7 billion in cloud infrastructure by 2030.

OpenAI is also preparing to set up a 1-GW data centre in the region.

Brookfield, Reliance and Digital Realty formed Digital Connexion in December 2023. The venture already operates a campus in Chennai and is developing a 40-megawatt facility in Mumbai.

India is emerging as one of the world’s fastest-growing data centre markets, driven by cloud adoption, AI workloads and rising internet usage.

Analysts expect the industry to exceed $100 billion by 2027.

A recent CBRE report said India has attracted nearly $94 billion in data centre investment commitments since 2019, with total capacity crossing 1.5 GW.

Ratings agency Crisil on Tuesday projected that India’s data centre operators will log annual revenue growth of 20-22% through FY28, taking the industry’s topline to around ₹20,000 crore, supported by rapid cloud adoption, AI-led computing needs and 5G expansion.

India’s data centre capacity is expected to double to 2.3-2.5 GW by March 2028, requiring capital expenditure of ₹55,000-65,000 crore during fiscals 2026-28, Crisil said.