Bharti Airtel announced on Tuesday, October 14, that it had entered into a strategic partnership with Google to establish India’s first Artificial Intelligence (AI) hub in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh.
The company said this landmark initiative would accelerate the adoption of AI across India, strengthen the country’s digital backbone and bring Google’s full AI-stack and consumer services closer to Indian businesses.
“Airtel and Google will jointly establish the purpose-built data centre in Visakhapatnam, as well as a state-of-the-art cable landing station (CLS) to host Google’s new international subsea cables that will join its extensive global terrestrial and subsea infrastructure,” said the company.
“Airtel will also create a robust intra-city as well as inter-city fibre network as a part of this project. This high-capacity, low-latency network will deliver faster experiences to Google users and customers, increase the resilience and capacity of India’s digital backbone, as well as drive digital inclusivity and transformation across India, bringing the benefits of AI to more people and businesses nationwide,” the company added.
A $15 billion investment
The company stated that Google’s AI hub in Visakhapatnam will be a multi-faceted investment of approximately $15 billion over five years (2026-2030), comprising gigawatt-scale data centre operations, supported by a robust subsea network and clean energy, to drive the most demanding AI workloads in India.
“It will be brought to life in close collaboration with ecosystem partners, including Airtel and AdaniConneX,” said Bharti Airtel.
Meanwhile, Bharti Airtel’s share price declined by about 1 per cent in intraday trade on Tuesday. The telecom stock opened at ₹1,967.95 against its previous close of ₹1,955.05 and dropped 0.83 per cent to an intraday low of ₹1,938.85.
The stock has seen decent gains over the last few days. On a monthly scale, the stock is up about 4 per cent in October so far after three consecutive months of losses.
Year-to-date, the stock has gained 22 per cent compared to a nearly 5 per cent gain in the equity benchmark Sensex.
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