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Blackstone-Backed AirTrunk Pledges $30B for Indian AI Data Center Expansion

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AirTrunk, the Australian data center operator backed by Blackstone, has announced a $30 billion commitment to develop 5 gigawatts of data center capacity across India by 2030, one of the largest single infrastructure pledges in the country’s rapidly expanding AI sector.

Chief executive Robin Khuda met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi ahead of the announcement, with Modi describing the investment as strengthening India’s position as a global hub for cloud computing and artificial intelligence. AirTrunk entered India earlier this year through its acquisition of Lumina CloudInfra and already has a development pipeline across Mumbai, Chennai, and Hyderabad.

The commitment joins major AI infrastructure pledges from Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI, as India’s data center capacity is projected to grow from approximately 1.5 gigawatts today to as much as 8 gigawatts by 2030, according to Bernstein.

James Dargan
About the author
James Dargan

James Dargan is a writer and researcher at The AI Insider. His focus is on the AI startup ecosystem and he writes articles on the space that have a tone accessible to the average reader.

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