Visakhapatnam is racing to add more than 6GW of AI data centre capacity by 2030, backed by projects worth over Rs 6 lakh crore, with Google, Reliance and Sify already breaking ground in and around the coastal city. The scale is enormous, India's entire installed data centre capacity today is just 1.5GW, which means one city on the Andhra Pradesh coast wants to build four times the country's current total, almost from scratch, TOI's Jinnala Umamaheswara Rao reports.
For a city known so far for its beaches, its port and the Eastern Naval Command headquartered there, this is a new kind of ambition. At the foundation stone-laying ceremony for the Google India AI Hub in April, Union IT and electronics minister Ashwini Vaishnaw only half-joked that Vizag could soon be called "AIPatnam." Nearly Rs 2.5 lakh crore worth of projects and 2GW of capacity are already approved or under construction — and that is before the rest of the pipeline even gets going.
