NEW DELHI: As India races to narrow the artificial intelligence gap with the United States and China, it is planning a vast new “data city” to power digital growth on a staggering scale, the man spearheading the project says.

“The AI revolution is here, no second thoughts about it,” said Nara Lokesh, information technology minister for Andhra Pradesh state, which is positioning the city of Visakhapatnam as a cornerstone of India’s AI push. “And as a nation... we have taken a stand that we’ve got to embrace it,” he said ahead of an international AI summit next week in New Delhi.

Lokesh boasts the state has secured investment agreements of $175 billion involving 760 projects, including a $15 billion investment by Google for its largest AI infrastructure hub outside the United States.

And a joint venture between India’s Reliance Industries, Canada’s Brookfield and US firm Digital Realty is investing $11 billion to develop an AI data centre in the same city.

Visakhapatnam — home to around two million people and popularly known as “Vizag” — is better known for its cricket ground that hosts international matches than cutting-edge technology.

But the southeastern port city is now being pitched as a landing point for submarine internet cables linking India to Singapore.

“The data city is going to come in one ecosystem... with a 100 kilometre (60 mile) radius,” Lokesh said. For comparison, Taiwan is roughly 100 kilometres wide.

‘Whole nine yards’

Lokesh said the plan goes far beyond data connectivity, adding that his state had “received close to 25 percent of all foreign direct investments” to India in 2025.

“It’s not just about the data centres,” he explained while outlining a sweeping vision of change, with Andhra Pradesh offering land at one US cent per acre (three per hectare) for major investors.

“I’m chasing the companies that make those servers that go sit in those data centres, the companies that make the entire air conditioning, the water-cooling system — the whole nine yards.”

Published in Dawn, February 16th, 2026