Digital Connexion, the joint venture of Reliance Industries, Brookfield Corporation, and Digital Realty, signs an MoU with Andhra Pradesh on November 26, 2025, targeting 400 acres, 1 GW capacity, and a 2030 completion date.
Digital Connexion, the joint venture formed by Reliance Industries, Brookfield Corporation, and US-based Digital Realty, signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Andhra Pradesh Economic Development Board on November 26, 2025, to build a 1-gigawatt AI-native data centre campus in Visakhapatnam. The $11 billion (approximately ₹98,000 crore) investment is scheduled for completion by 2030 and would make it the largest single data centre cluster ever announced in India.
The campus will span 400 acres near Visakhapatnam, housing high-density GPU, TPU, and next-generation AI processor racks engineered for demanding AI and cloud workloads. The announcement was formalised at the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) Partnership Summit 2025 in Visakhapatnam, in the presence of Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu, IT and Industries Minister Nara Lokesh, and Reliance Industries Executive Director PMS Prasad. The Andhra Pradesh government expected to sign over 400 MoUs with major corporates at the summit.
The deal positions Andhra Pradesh, rather than India’s established data centre metros of Mumbai, Chennai, and Hyderabad, as the country’s primary hyperscale AI hub. That geographic bet is deliberate: Visakhapatnam’s deep-water port connectivity, subsea internet cable landing points, relatively lower land costs, and the state government’s proactive clearance support were cited by Digital Connexion as location advantages.
WHY RELIANCE, WHY NOW
Mukesh Ambani formally announced Reliance’s entry into large-scale AI infrastructure at the company’s 47th Annual General Meeting on August 29, 2024, where he outlined gigawatt-scale data centres, AI processor procurement, and global technology partnerships as strategic priorities. The Visakhapatnam project is the largest single asset to emerge from that roadmap.
In September 2025, Reliance incorporated Reliance Intelligence as a wholly owned subsidiary to execute its AI infrastructure strategy, according to filings with India’s Ministry of Corporate Affairs. That entity has been designated a strategic partner for driving adoption of Google’s Gemini Enterprise suite across Indian organisations, under a collaboration agreement with Google Cloud that also gives Reliance clients access to Google’s Tensor Processing Units (TPUs), as disclosed in a joint statement by Reliance and Google Cloud dated September 2025.
“We are laying the groundwork for a truly national AI infrastructure.” — Mukesh Ambani, 47th AGM
The Visakhapatnam facility complements, not mirrors, Reliance’s separate 3 GW AI data centre project in Jamnagar, Gujarat, which was reported by Bloomberg to carry an estimated cost of $20 billion to $30 billion and targets completion within 24 months. Together, the two sites would form what Ambani described as one of Asia’s strongest AI infrastructure networks, with a combined planned capacity of 4 GW across the two facilities.
THE ENERGY EQUATION
A 1 GW data centre campus requires an uninterrupted, low-carbon power supply at a scale most Indian states cannot currently guarantee. Reliance has committed a dedicated 6-gigawatt-peak solar project to supply clean energy to its AI operations, six times the Visakhapatnam data centre’s power draw, providing headroom for losses, future expansion, and energy export. This addresses what is typically the single largest constraint on hyperscale data centre development in India.
Reliance has separately secured Nvidia’s Blackwell AI processors following a collaboration announced at the October 2024 Nvidia AI Summit. Blackwell-generation chips are engineered for large language model training and inference at scale, giving Digital Connexion a hardware advantage over competitors still awaiting chip allocations.
SCALE OF DIGITAL CONNEXION’S EXISTING OPERATIONS
The Visakhapatnam project represents a dramatic leap beyond Digital Connexion’s current footprint. The JV’s Chennai campus, launched in January 2024, handles up to 100 megawatts of critical IT load. A second campus with 40MW capacity is under construction in Mumbai’s Chandivali district both operating as carrier-neutral, low-latency hubs. The proposed Visakhapatnam facility at 1,000MW (1GW) is ten times the size of the Chennai campus and would rank among the largest data centres in the Asia-Pacific region.
INDIA’S HYPERSCALE RACE
The Visakhapatnam announcement arrives as global technology majors race to anchor AI infrastructure in India. In October 2025, Google committed approximately $15 billion over five years to an AI infrastructure hub, also in Visakhapatnam. Amazon has outlined $12.7 billion for cloud infrastructure across India by the end of the decade, while OpenAI is exploring a 1 GW data centre in the country. Analysts project India’s data centre market will exceed $100 billion by 2027, driven by rising cloud demand, expanding 5G coverage, and large-scale AI workloads.
India’s data centre capacity stood at approximately 950 MW in FY2024 and is forecast to reach 2 GW to 2.1 GW by FY2027, according to ICRA, and to quintuple to 8 GW by 2030, requiring around $30 billion in capital expenditure across the sector. The Digital Connexion campus alone would add 1GW to that national total.
RELIANCE’S EXISTING FOOTPRINT IN ANDHRA PRADESH
The Visakhapatnam project is not Reliance’s first commitment to the state. The company has already invested more than ₹2,21,775 crore approximately $25 billion in Andhra Pradesh across oil and gas, digital services, and retail businesses.
CURRENT STATUS
Digital Connexion is expected to roll out the Visakhapatnam project in phases, though detailed phase-wise timelines and confirmed customer commitments have not yet been disclosed. Morgan Stanley, which carries an overweight rating on Reliance Industries with a price target of ₹1,803 per share (as of Q1 2026), assessed that part of the data centre capacity may be deployed internally, while the remainder could operate under a Data Center-as-a-Service (DCaaS) model, leasing compute to hyperscalers and AI developers.
The MoU with the Andhra Pradesh Economic Development Board covers regulatory facilitation and clearances. State officials confirmed that investment commitments announced at the CII Summit, including ₹1.08 lakh crore from Brookfield alone, are intended to be executed within three and a half to four years, not held as aspirational targets. Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu said each announced investment is genuine and will be delivered within the committed timeframe.
KEY FACTS AT A GLANCE
| Investment | $11 billion (₹98,000 crore) by 2030 |
| Capacity | 1GW AI-native data centre campus |
| Location | 400 acres, Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh |
| JV Partners | Reliance Industries · Brookfield Corporation · Digital Realty |
| MoU signed | November 26, 2025 — AP Economic Development Board |
| Power supply | 6GWp dedicated solar project |
| Chips | Nvidia Blackwell AI processors (secured Oct 2024) |
| Existing AP investment by Reliance | ₹2,21,775 crore ($25 billion) |
| Jamnagar data centre (separate) | 3GW, est. $20–30 billion |
| India data centre market projection | >$100 billion by 2027 |
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FAQs
Who owns Digital Connexion, the company building the Visakhapatnam data centre?
Digital Connexion is a joint venture owned by Reliance Industries, Brookfield Corporation, and Digital Realty Trust. Reliance Industries is the lead Indian partner.
The JV already operates a 100 MW data centre campus in Chennai and is building a 40 MW campus in Mumbai’s Chandivali area.
How will Reliance power a 1 GW data center? Where does the electricity come from?
Reliance has committed a dedicated 6-gigawatt-peak (GWp) solar power project to supply clean energy exclusively to its AI data centre operations.
At 6GWp, the solar capacity is six times the Visakhapatnam campus’s 1GW requirement, providing a buffer for transmission losses, phased ramp-up, and future expansion.
The Jamnagar data centre is also planned to run on renewable energy from Reliance’s adjacent green energy complex, including solar, wind, and hydrogen infrastructure.
Is Reliance also building a data centre in Jamnagar?
Yes. The Jamnagar project in Gujarat is a separate, direct Reliance Industries initiative, not a Digital Connexion JV asset. It targets 3GW of capacity (three times the Visakhapatnam facility) at an estimated cost of $20–30 billion, according to Bloomberg, with a 24-month completion target. Combined, the two sites would give Reliance 4GW of planned AI data centre capacity.
Why is Visakhapatnam becoming India’s data centre hub and not Mumbai or Hyderabad?
Three structural advantages are driving this shift:
- Connectivity: Visakhapatnam has subsea cable landing stations enabling low-latency global connections
- Cost advantage: Lower land and power costs compared to Mumbai and Hyderabad
- Policy push: Strong government support led by Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu, with proactive clearance facilitation
Google’s $15 billion AI infrastructure commitment to the same city in October 2025 reinforces the trend.
When will the Visakhapatnam data centre be completed?
The MoU signed on November 26, 2025 targets full 1GW operational capacity by 2030. The project will be developed in phases, as is standard for hyperscale campuses of this scale. Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu confirmed at the CII Summit that announced investment commitments, including this project, are intended for execution within three and a half to four years, not aspirational targets.
