Google's 1 GW Vizag Hub Will Need Its Own Power Grid Built Alongside It
When Google announced its first AI hub in India last October, the headline was the money: about $15 billion over five years from 2026 to 2030, the company's largest investment in the country. Ten months later, the harder part is coming into view. Building a gigawatt of computing in Visakhapatnam also means building the power plants, transmission lines and storage to run it, on the same timetable. "We are solving a multi-variable equation in parallel, so that all of it can show up together at the right time," Alexander Smith, Google's principal of global infrastructure and energy for Asia Pacific, told Business Standard on 27 August.
"When we talk about having a full AI infrastructure stack, you need the cable components, the renewable energy generation, and energy transmission infrastructure to come together. Smith said the company hopes to finish construction of the first phase within 24 to 30 months and begin initial operations soon after, putting first operations around late 2028. "Often the first building that is built is the most expensive and slowest," he said, adding that overall completion will depend on how quickly lessons from the first phase are applied.
From the outset Google said the hub would include more than data halls. Thomas Kurian, chief executive of Google Cloud, wrote in October 2025 that the company would work with partners "to deliver new transmission lines, clean energy generation, and energy storage systems in Andhra Pradesh, expanding the diverse portfolio of clean energy that contributes to India's electricity grid." AdaniConneX, the data centre joint venture of Adani Enterprises, is building the campus with Google, and Airtel is a connectivity partner.
Adani said on 14 October 2025 that the partnership includes new transmission lines, clean energy generation and energy storage systems in Andhra Pradesh, which it said would support the data centre's operations and also improve the resilience and capacity of India's electricity grid. The first test is whether the energy infrastructure keeps pace with the buildings.