Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Meta are investing tens of billions of dollars into India’s digital ecosystem and highlighting the surging worldwide appetite for computing capacity and data storage.
US technology giants are investing huge amounts of money into India as the country positions itself at the centre of the global hub for data centres and artificial intelligence infrastructure, according to a report by The New York Times.
Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Meta are investing tens of billions of dollars into India’s digital ecosystem and highlighting the surging worldwide appetite for computing capacity and data storage.
Microsoft has pledged $17.5 billion for AI-related projects in India, while Amazon has plans to spend $35 billion on AI-driven operations across the country over the next five years.
Google has committed $15 billion towards developing data centres in partnership with Adani Group and Bharti Airtel. Meta is setting up a large facility close to Google’s proposed sites, alongside several other projects being undertaken by domestic conglomerates.
In total, the pledged investments add up to at least $67.5 billion, marking one of the most significant capital inflows into a single sector in India’s history. “This is going to be one of the largest single-sector investments that India’s ever seen,” Somnath Mukherjee, Chief Investment Officer at ASK Wealth Advisors in Mumbai, told The New York Times.
The scale of spending shows that companies are betting on India’s expanding digital market and enormous user base. While the country generates close to a fifth of the world’s data, it accounts for only a small share of global storage infrastructure. “India is the largest consumer of data in the world, but with barely five per cent of American data capacity,” Mukherjee said.
Although trade tensions persist between the US and India, including high tariffs announced by Washington earlier this year, the report noted that the investment surge has continued.
India has been exploring measures to reduce reliance on foreign servers, including potential rules requiring local data storage. Since 2018, policymakers have debated laws requiring digital services to operate from servers within India, with sectors such as banking and messaging already governed by such norms.
