Indian data center firm Yotta to build $2b Nvidia-powered AI hub
Indian data center operator Yotta Data Services announced plans on February 18 to invest more than $2 billion to develop one of Asia's largest AI computing hubs powered by 20,736 liquid-cooled Nvidia Blackwell Ultra GPUs, positioning India as a critical node in the global AI infrastructure race as the country pursues data sovereignty and reduced dependence on offshore compute capacity.
The large-scale deployment includes a four-year engagement valued at over $1 billion under which Nvidia will establish one of the Asia-Pacific region's largest DGX Cloud clusters within Yotta's infrastructure. The AI supercluster is expected to go live by August 2026, marking one of the fastest large-scale AI compute rollouts globally and coinciding with India's broader push to attract more than $200 billion in AI infrastructure investment by 2028.
Strategic Infrastructure Positioning Near Capital
The supercluster will be deployed primarily at Yotta's 60-megawatt D2 data center at its Greater Noida hyperscale campus near New Delhi, which is scalable to 250 megawatts, with additional capacity supported by its Navi Mumbai facility designed to scale to a massive 2 gigawatts. Together, these facilities form what could become one of the world's most significant AI compute corridors, directly supporting India's sovereign AI ambitions outlined in the IndiaAI Mission.
Yotta, part of Indian billionaire Niranjan Hiranandani's real estate group, operates as Nvidia's partner firm in India and runs three data center campuses in Mumbai, Gujarat, and near New Delhi. The company's investment represents the largest single private-sector commitment to AI infrastructure in India and arrives as global cloud providers including Microsoft and Amazon expand AI data center capacity across the country.
Timing Reflects Shifting Global Chip Supply Chains
The investment arrives amid US export controls that have reshaped global supply chains for advanced AI chips, prompting companies to deepen partnerships in markets like India where geopolitical tensions are lower than in China. India has emerged as an attractive alternative location for AI infrastructure deployment, offering a combination of technical talent, English-language capability, democratic governance, and growing domestic demand for generative AI services.
The announcement occurred during India's five-day AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, which is drawing global tech leaders including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, and Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis. The timing underscores India's strategy of leveraging high-profile government events to announce major infrastructure commitments that position the country as a serious AI competitor.
Addressing India's GPU Shortage and Data Localization Needs
India currently has fewer than 60,000 GPUs deployed across all providers, according to estimates from private equity giant Blackstone, which led a $1.2 billion funding round for competing Indian AI cloud startup Neysa just days before Yotta's announcement. Blackstone projected India will need to scale to more than 2 million GPUs in coming years to meet demand driven by government requirements, regulated sector data localization mandates, and AI developers building models domestically.
Yotta's deployment of more than 20,000 next-generation GPUs represents a significant step toward closing that gap and reducing Indian companies' reliance on overseas cloud infrastructure, which increases costs and creates compliance complexity. Domestic capacity could enhance competitiveness for India's startup ecosystem and enterprise sectors that have historically depended on foreign cloud providers.
Energy and Sustainability Considerations
AI data centers are notoriously energy-intensive, and India's renewable energy transition will intersect directly with AI expansion plans. The use of liquid cooling for the Blackwell Ultra GPUs represents an attempt to manage thermal loads more efficiently than traditional air cooling, but the 60-megawatt initial deployment still requires substantial power infrastructure with plans to scale to 250 megawatts at the Greater Noida campus alone.
For India, the $2 billion Yotta investment and the separate $1.2 billion Neysa funding from Blackstone signal that private capital is flowing toward Indian AI infrastructure at unprecedented scale. If realized alongside government initiatives, these investments could fundamentally reshape India's position in the global AI ecosystem from a peripheral player dependent on foreign compute to a substantial infrastructure provider capable of supporting indigenous AI model development and deployment.
