AirTrunk, the Australia-based hyperscale data-center operator owned by Blackstone and backed by the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), has announced plans to invest more than $30 billion (over ₹3 lakh crore) in India by 2030. The company aims to build more than 5 gigawatts (GW) of data-center capacity, making it one of the largest digital infrastructure investments ever proposed in the country. The announcement came after AirTrunk founder and CEO Robin Khuda met Prime Minister Narendra Modi, with the company highlighting India as one of its most important growth markets for the next decade.
The size of the proposed expansion is significant. India currently has around 1.6 GW of operational data-center capacity, while another 3.1 GW is under construction or in the planning stage. Therefore, AirTrunk’s plan to add over 5 GW on its own is larger than the country’s existing operational capacity and could account for a major share of India’s future data-center growth. Estimates suggest the country’s total capacity could rise to around 8 GW by 2030, driven by growing demand for cloud computing, AI, digital payments, streaming and enterprise technology services.
The move becomes even more notable because AirTrunk only entered the Indian market a few weeks ago. In April, the company acquired Lumina CloudInfra, giving it an initial pipeline of around 600 megawatts (MW) across key markets like Mumbai, Chennai and Hyderabad.
A major part of the company’s India strategy is expected to be centered on Maharashtra, which has become the country’s largest data-center hub. Earlier this week, plans emerged for a massive 3-GW hyperscale campus in Raigad district, involving an investment of around ₹2 trillion ($21 billion). Mumbai continues to attract the largest share of data-center investments because it serves as India’s financial capital and hosts key submarine cable landing stations that connect the country to global internet networks.
However, at the same time, Chennai and Hyderabad have also emerged as important locations because of their growing technology ecosystems and strong demand from cloud and enterprise customers.
The timing of the development becomes significant as it coincides with an unprecedented infrastructure race among major corporate giants in India. For example, Adani Group’s AdaniConneX is aggressively moving toward a target of 1 GW of data center capacity by 2030. Even Meta has recently made a major push by leasing data center space in Chennai to localize its AI and user workloads.
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Ashutosh is a Senior Writer at The Tech Portal, largely reporting on new tech, and intersection of technology and business. Ashutosh’s career spans across nearly a decade of technology writing across multiple platforms and languages.
