From Pichai’s promise to industry confidence: Vizag’s AI moment
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Visakhapatnam: Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and its parent Alphabet, has projected a transformative future for Visakhapatnam, saying the coastal city could emerge as a leading global artificial intelligence (AI) hub within the next four to five years.
Speaking at the All India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, Pichai recalled passing through what he described as a “quiet coastal city” during his student days while travelling on the Chennai–Howrah Coromandel Express. “It was unimaginable then that Visakhapatnam would one day be positioned as an international AI hub,” he said.
Pichai announced that Google will invest USD 15 billion over five years to establish a full-stack AI hub in Visakhapatnam as part of its overseas infrastructure expansion. The proposed facility will include gigawatt-scale data centre capacity, advanced AI compute infra and international subsea cable connectivity, which he described as a potential game-changer for regional economic growth and job creation.Google has partnered with Adani CoNnex and Bharti Airtel for the project. In parallel, Pichai said Google will build four new subsea fibre-optic cable systems between India and the United States under its America–India Connect initiative, underscoring the importance of connectivity in the global AI ecosystem. Local industry leaders echoed the optimism. O. Naresh Kumar, CEO of Symbiosys Technologies, said the city is poised to become a major global AI destination in the coming years. Sify Technologies has already partnered with Meta to set up a 50-MW data centre and cable landing station at Madhurawada with an investment of USD 1.8 billion. At the summit, Pichai described AI as “the biggest platform shift of our lifetimes,” capable of unlocking scientific breakthroughs and enabling emerging economies to leapfrog traditional development stages. He highlighted AlphaFold by Google DeepMind, now used by over three million researchers globally, and stressed the need to prevent a digital divide from becoming an “AI divide” through investments in compute, skills and governance.
