Reliance Industries is gearing up for one of India’s most ambitious digital infrastructure builds yet. The company is reportedly planning an investment of about INR 1.6 trillion (more than US$17 billion) to develop a massive 1.5GW data center cluster in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, according to people familiar with the matter.
What makes this proposed project especially notable is its scale and its energy strategy. The plan is said to pair the data center campus with captive renewable energy generation, supported by battery storage. In practical terms, that combination is designed to deliver the reliable, around-the-clock electricity that hyperscale data centers need, while reducing dependence on conventional power sources and keeping long-term operating costs more predictable.
Visakhapatnam is emerging as a strategic location for large technology and industrial investments, thanks to its coastal advantages, improving connectivity, and the broader push to expand India’s digital economy. A data center cluster of this size could strengthen the region’s position as a key hub for cloud services, enterprise computing, and AI-ready infrastructure. With global and domestic demand rising for AI workloads, data processing, and secure storage, large capacity builds are increasingly viewed as essential to support everything from consumer apps to government platforms and corporate cloud migration.
If executed as outlined, the project could also support job creation across construction, electrical and mechanical engineering, operations, security, network management, and a wide range of local services that typically grow around large data center ecosystems. It may also attract additional investment from suppliers, cloud and software partners, and companies looking to colocate close to major compute capacity.
While timelines and detailed specifications have not been publicly confirmed in the information cited, the reported investment highlights just how quickly India’s data center market is scaling up. A 1.5GW data center cluster backed by renewable power and battery storage would place Visakhapatnam firmly on the map as a future-facing destination for large-scale data infrastructure and AI computing capacity.
