At the foundation ceremony of the $15 billion Google-backed AI data centre near Visakhapatnam, Jeet Adani, Director at Adani Group, made a clear pitch: the global artificial intelligence (AI) race will be won not just by algorithms, but by those who control energy, compute and connectivity at scale.

Sharing the stage with Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu, Adani framed the Vizag project as a structural leap for India’s digital backbone. With nearly 1 gigawatt (GW) capacity planned at a single location, the facility rivals India’s current installed data centre base of about 1.3 GW—signalling a rapid scale-up as AI workloads surge.

Energy to decide AI economics

“AI may be written in code, but it runs on electricity,” Adani said, in a line that summed up the economics of the sector. Power typically accounts for 40–60% of data centre operating costs, making energy efficiency and pricing decisive in determining the cost of compute.

Adani outlined a $100 billion group-wide commitment to build integrated infrastructure spanning renewable energy, transmission, digital networks and data centres. The strategy hinges on lowering the cost of compute—training, inference and storage—thereby accelerating AI adoption across sectors. As energy costs fall, he noted, “the cost of intelligence” declines, expanding access and commercial viability.

Vizag’s emergence as a digital gateway

A key pillar of this strategy is geographic diversification. For decades, India’s data infrastructure has been concentrated in Mumbai and Chennai. The development of undersea cable landing infrastructure in Visakhapatnam is now positioning the eastern coast as a new entry point for global data flows.

With port-led logistics, land availability and policy support, Vizag offers a compelling alternative for hyperscale investments. The 600-acre project is part of Andhra Pradesh’s broader plan to build a 6.5 GW digital ecosystem, aimed at attracting cloud, AI and data-driven enterprises.

Big tech partnerships, faster execution

Adani also pointed to deepening partnerships with global players such as Google, calling them critical to combining hyperscale cloud capability with infrastructure execution on the ground. He credited the state’s policy clarity and speed of decision-making for enabling projects of this scale.

Drawing a parallel with Bengaluru’s role in the IT services boom, Adani said Visakhapatnam is positioned to anchor India’s AI-led growth cycle. As nations compete to build the backbone of the AI economy, he argued, the differentiator will be simple: the ability to deliver power, data and infrastructure—faster and at scale.