OpenAI Plans Data Center in India, Report Says

San Francisco-headquartered OpenAI is looking to build a massive data centre in India as part of the company’s push to scale the infrastructure required for operating artificial intelligence services. The company is currently

seeking local partners to initiate work on the data centre project,Bloomberg reported.

The data centre would likely boast of at least 1-gigawatt capacity, and the site could be one of the largest in the country, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter. The details on the location for the planned project or the timeline are not available.

In August, the company’s CEO, Sam Altman, announced the ambition to spend “trillions of dollars” on infrastructure necessary for AI over the years. Under the company’s

signature infrastructure venture, the Stargate project that aims to raise $500 billion in the US, has already tied up with SoftBank Group and Oracle for building data centres with some 4.5 gigawatts capacity.

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Building a data centre in India would mean that the ChatGPT-maker can provide industrial-scale AI services in the country without raising concerns over data transfers.

Earlier, OpenAI had announcedplans to

open its first India office in New Delhi later this year, marking a major expansion in one of its fastest-growing markets. The move comes as India emerges as the second-largest user base for ChatGPT globally, after the US. The company has formally established an entity in India and begun hiring a local team.

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Similar data centre plans have been announced earlier by big tech companies. In July, Google said that it

would invest $6 billion to develop a 1-gigawatt data centre and its power infrastructure in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh.

According to a CRISIL report published in December 2024, India's data centre capacity is set to more than double to 2-2.3 GW by 2026-27, led by increasing digitalisation as organisations increase their investments in cloud storage. The report anticipated the rising penetration of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) to drive the demand over the medium term.