Digital Connexion, in partnership with a major industrial conglomerate, has announced a 1.1 billion dollar investment to build a 1 gigawatt class data centre complex focused on artificial intelligence workloads in Andhra Pradesh. The project is expected to anchor a new wave of AI infrastructure in India, catering to demand from enterprises, cloud providers, and research institutions seeking high-performance computing capacity for AI training and inference. The company said the investment will cover building large scale data centres, power infrastructure, networking and support facilities required for AI and cloud services.
The data centre complex, planned near Visakhapatnam, aims to provide both capacity and scalability to run compute intensive AI models, machine learning workloads and enterprise cloud operations. Digital Connexion said the facility will be designed to meet global standards of uptime, redundancy, cooling efficiency and security. It will incorporate advanced power management, backup systems and modular growth capacity to support expansion as demand grows. The firm described the investment as a strategic move to position India as a destination for AI infrastructure rather than outsourcing overseas data centre needs.
According to company statements, the project aligns with increasing AI adoption across sectors such as information technology, manufacturing, healthcare, and financial services in India. As AI becomes central to enterprise strategies, demand for powerful, reliable computing resources is rising sharply. Digital Connexion said that by investing locally, it expects to reduce latency, ramp up data sovereignty, and provide enterprises with compliant, high-performing infrastructure that addresses local regulatory and data privacy requirements.
The plan also entails supporting ancillary infrastructure — including renewable energy integration, advanced cooling solutions and possibly green power sourcing — to make the data centre more sustainable. This becomes important given the energy intensive nature of AI computing. The company indicated that the project will explore energy efficient designs and seek to balance growth with environmental sustainability, in line with global best practices. They said the facility will be built with a modular design to allow optimisation of resource usage and future upgrades.
Analysts observing the investment said this move marks a significant milestone for India’s AI infrastructure maturity. Historically, many Indian firms have relied on overseas data centres or public cloud resources for compute heavy workloads. The establishment of a 1 GW-class AI data centre complex could reduce dependency on foreign infrastructure, lower costs for local enterprises and enable broader adoption of AI applications across industries. It may also encourage more companies to consider India as a viable location for AI-driven services and global deployments.
The company noted that the project also aims to provide reliable support for domestic startups and mid-sized firms that currently struggle to access high-performance AI compute due to cost or regulatory constraints. By offering scalable computing resources locally, Digital Connexion hopes to democratise access to AI infrastructure. This could spur innovation, research and development, and competitiveness among Indian firms and researchers.
Officials said that construction of the data centre complex is expected to begin soon, subject to regulatory clearances and land development processes. The development plan includes phased delivery, starting with an initial capacity to serve enterprise workloads followed by expansion to reach full 1 GW capacity. Digital Connexion said it will set up robust operations, security, maintenance and staffing infrastructure to support long-term operations. The firm expects to hire staff across data centre operations, maintenance, network engineering and support over the duration of construction and commissioning.
Market watchers commented that investing in local data centre infrastructure can help India handle the projected surge in AI use cases such as natural language processing, computer vision, generative AI, analytics and cloud-native applications. As enterprises scale up adoption, demand for low-latency, high-capacity infrastructure will only grow. With a major facility onshore, companies may find it more attractive to run sensitive workloads locally rather than using overseas servers.
Some observers also flagged challenges. The energy requirements for a large AI data centre, even if optimised, are significant. Ensuring stable power supply, efficient cooling, and compliance with environmental regulations will be critical. The success of the project will depend on execution, regulatory clearances, and the ability to attract enterprise demand at the scale needed to justify a gigawatt-class investment.
If completed as planned, the data centre complex could alter how enterprises in India and abroad access AI infrastructure. It may lead to increased local hosting, better data privacy compliance, reduced latency for latency-sensitive applications, and growth in AI-powered services developed within India. It could also attract foreign companies looking for reliable and compliant infrastructure in South Asia.
Digital Connexion said the investment reaffirms its commitment to building long-term AI infrastructure in India and supporting the growth of the technology ecosystem. The company believes that with rising interest in generative AI, cloud computing and large scale analytics, demand for data centre capacity will surge. By investing ahead of demand, the firm hopes to position itself as a leader in AI infrastructure for enterprises, startups and research institutions alike.
In summary the 1.1 billion dollar investment by Digital Connexion represents a major bet on India’s AI future. If successfully implemented, the project could become a foundation for the next generation of AI adoption, enabling enterprises and developers across sectors to access powerful compute infrastructure domestically. As AI continues to reshape technology and business, such infrastructure investments may prove key to driving innovation, resilience and competitiveness in the digital economy.